Class BX 833 <3 
Book. .IB a W 5" 
GcjpghtNL 

CCPXRIGKT DEPOSIT. 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



By Louis Albert Banks 



Christ and His Friends 

The Fisherman and His Friends 

Paul and His Friends 

John and His Friends 

David and His Friends 

Anecdotes and Morals 

Poetry and Morals 

A Year's Prayer-Meeting Talks 

On the Trail of Moses 

The Winds of God 

The Unexpected Christ 

Twentieth Century Knighthood 

Windows for Sermons 

The Christian Gentleman 

My Young Man 

Hero Tales from Sacred Story 

The Saloon-Keeper's Ledger 

Sermon Stories for Boys and Girls 

Seven Times Around Jericho 

Ammunition for Final Drive on Booze 

Sermons Which Have Won Souls 

Spurgeon's Illustrative Anecdotes 

The Problems of Youth 

The World's Childhood 

The Sinner and His Friends 

The Sunday Evening Evangel 



THE 
WINDS OF GOD 



BY 

The Rev. Louis Albert Banks, D.D. 

Author of "Christ and His Friends," "The Problems 
of Youth," "Sermons Which Have 
Won Souls," Etc. 




FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
New York and London 
1920 



40 



Copyright, 1920, 

BY 

Funk & Wagnalls Company 



Printed in the United States of America 



Published in December, 1920 



Copyright under the Articles of the Copyright Convention of the 
Pan-American Republics and the United States, August 11, 1910 



JAN 21 iS2i 



©CU608102 



DEDICATED 
WITH LOVING GRATITUDE 
MY FRIEND 
MRS. JOHN C. AIKEN 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The East Wind . 9 

The wind that drives the soul to God 

The North Wind ....... 23 

The wind that purifies character 

The West Wind 41 

The wind that inspires to growth and fertility 

The South Wind 56 

The wind that brings peace and charm 

The Whirlwinds of Life 72 

The Need of a Red-Blooded Christianity 86 

An Artesian Well of Joy 103 

Tightening the Belt of the Soul . . 123 

The Christian's Junk Pile 141 

Following Our Pace-Maker .... 161 
The Beautiful Man in the Heart . . .181 

The Banishment of Anxiety .... 200 

The Sorrows of a Tangled Soul . . . 216 

The Freedom of the City of God . . 234 

The Growing Soul 252 

Abraham Lincoln 269 

7 



8 CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Blessings That Come From Prayer . 284 
To-Day — The Most Important Day of Life 294 

To Whom Do We Belong? 303 

My Gospel 312 

The Tenth Man . 324 

The Romance and Joy of the Pioneer . 338 

Keeping the Soul Alive 350 

The Personality of Jesus 364 

The Sources of Strength ..... 384 
The Durable Satisfactions of Life . . 402 
The Value of Charm in a Christian 

Personality . 420 

A Beautiful Old Age 432 

The Bible Ideal of a Noble Womanhood 448 
The Love Letters of God 460 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



THE EAST WIND— THE WIND 
THAT DRIVES THE SOUL 
TO GOD 

"An east wind shall come, the breath of Jehovah coming 
up from the wilderness." — Hosea 13 : 15. 

THIS striking passage of Scripture illus- 
trates the immanence of God in human 
life. The tribe of Ephraim was strong. When 
he spoke, all the tribes about trembled. No 
other tribe had such a reputation for strength 
and power. He was fruitful among his breth- 
ren. So far as human sources of strength were 
concerned, he was not only the leader, but gave 
every promise of continuing in leadership. 
And yet the prophet declares that an east wind 
shall come and blow on Ephraim, and as a 
result of it his springs of power and joy shall 
be exhausted and all his fountains of resource 
shall be dried up. And the prophet emphasizes 

9 



10 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the fact that this is not merely a chance, un- 
lucky wind that blows on Ephraim — it is a part 
of that divine Providence which watches over 
and works in the world to reveal to men their 
own weakness and demonstrate to them that 
their true strength is in God. These people 
had become proud of their own strength. They 
did not know God any longer. They thought 
it was their own wisdom, their own cunning, 
their own might which made them great, and 
so the prophet declares that a breath of Jeho- 
vah shall come in the form of an east wind and 
dry up their fountains of influence and pride 
and make them to know that men are strong 
only in God. 

There never was an age when men needed to 
have that emphasized more than in this day, 
when men put God far away from them 
through theories of evolution and interpreta- 
tions of life that are likely to hide God and 
make him seem afar off. But God has not 
forsaken his world and the noblest science finds 
God as immanent as any scholarship of the 
olden time. William Herbert Carruth, one of 
our own American scholars, makes this very 
clear in a remarkable poem: 



THE EAST WIND 



"A fire-mist and a planet, 

A crystal and a cell, 
A jelly-fish and a saurian, 

And caves where cave men dwell. 
Then a sense of Love and Duty 

And a face turned from the clod, 
Some call it Evolution 

And others — call it God. 

"A haze on the far horizon, 

An infinite tender sky, 
Ripe rich tints of cornfields 

And wild geese sailing high; 
And all over upland and lowland 

Charm of goldenrod, 
Some of us call it Autumn, 

And others say it is God. 

"The echo of ancient chanting, 

The gleam of altar flames : 
The stones of a hundred temples 

Graven with sacred names; 
Man's patient quest for the Secret 

In soul, in star, in sod; 
Some deem it superstition, 

And others believe it is God. 

"A picket frozen on duty, 

A mother starved for her brood, 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the Rood; 
The millions who, humble and nameless, 

The straight hard path have trod — 
Some call it consecration, 

And others feel it is God. 



12 THE WINDS OF GOD 

"Like the tides on the crescent sea-beach, 

When the moon is new and thin, 
Into our hearts high yearnings 

Come welling and surging in — 
They come from the mystic ocean 

Whose rim no foot has trod — 
Some of us call it longing, 

We know that it is God." 

God often uses the east wind in his Word 
as an illustration of his active providence in 
interfering with the proud and wicked dealings 
of men. Sometimes it is used to show how 
God breaks up men's plans, overwhelming 
them in disaster. You may find a case like that 
in the twenty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel, 
where the prophet takes up the word of God 
in lamentation over the city of Tyre, which was 
to be destroyed. It was a wonderful city, per- 
fect in beauty, with its borders in the heart of 
the »seas. The great forests 'of Lebanon and 
Bashan had furnished cedar and oak, and the 
isles of the sea had furnished ivory, and Egypt 
had poured its treasures, to make Tyre the 
commercial glory of its time. But the prophet 
sees that, in spite of all the forces working to- 
gether to make it a great market for horses, 
mules, goats, wheat, honey, oil, jewels, wine, 



THE EAST WIND 



13 



wool, and precious cloths, so that it excelled all 
the other markets of mankind in its day, still 
an east wind will come, and in his vision he ex- 
claims : "The east wind hath broken thee in the 
heart of the seas." And he saw the ruin of 
Tyre because, tho the east wind blew upon 
them, in their rebellion they refused to be 
driven to wisdom and reverence and worship. 

Again we see the same illustration used to 
show how God sometimes dries up the sources 
of a man's or a people's prosperity, seeking 
thus to bring them to himself. In the nine- 
teenth chapter of Ezekiel the prophet is com- 
manded to take up lamentation for the princes 
of Israel. And he meditates on the fact that 
their mother was like a vine planted by the 
waters. The vine was fruitful and full of 
branches, and it had strong rods for the scep- 
tres of them that bare rule, but because of their 
sins and wickedness, God sent an east wind 
that dried up its fruits and its strong rods were 
broken down and consumed. 

In that remarkable dream of Pharaoh, where 
he saw seven ears come up upon one stalk, full 
and good; and afterward he saw seven ears 
withered, thin, and blasted with the east wind 



14 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



which sprung up after them, and devoured the 
good ears, we have another illustration of how 
God uses the east wind as a figure to show his 
constant presence in the world to overcome evil 
and bring about righteousness and to further 
his purposes among men. 

We may trace the east wind in the lives of 
men. Take the case of Joseph. When his 
brethren came down into Egypt after corn, 
and he revealed himself to them, and they were 
overwhelmed with shame, Joseph showed his 
understanding of what the east wind meant 
when he said to them: "As for you, ye meant 
evil against me, but God meant it for good." 
These words spoken by Joseph to his repentant 
brethren reveal his faith in and knowledge of 
the God who had been with him in the days of 
his distress and throughout all his path as a 
slave in prison, and on to the office of prime 
minister of Egypt. Joseph understood that 
to the man who trusts God his winds of provi- 
dence are always effectual. "Ye meant evil," 
said Joseph, "but God meant good." Some- 
one has said that God keeps no sharp instru- 
ments in his treasury, so he has to employ oth- 
ers — sometimes even Satan himself — for doing 



THE EAST WIND 



15 



the necessary pruning upon his people. Isaiah 
says, "In that day shall the Lord shave with a 
razor that is hired," and the king of Assyria 
was God's "hired razor," which he used as an 
east wind to carry out his purposes. Satan was 
permitted to use his fullest resources against 
Job, and the east wind blew on Job, destroying 
his houses and herds and wiping out his wealth, 
and, most terrible of all, destroying his chil- 
dren and his health ; but it only served to bring 
Job into a clearer vision of God and to far 
greater prosperity and blessing. The result 
was that Job, having been driven closer to God 
by the east wind of trial and sorrow, received 
from the hand of God twice as much as he had 
before. 

We have the same lesson if we return to the 
story of Joseph. When to him as a young man 
God gave those wonderful dreams and visions, 
when he saw the shocks of grain in the field 
bowing down to him and the stars in the sky 
making obeisance to him, and in the innocency 
of his heart he talked with his brothers about 
it, he was not experienced enough with the 
world's keen-edged tools to know that God was 
in it all, and that the jealousy of these very 



16 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



brothers would be the east wind that would 
send him to exile and slavery- — down into 
Egypt to get ready for his great career. "Shalt 
thou indeed reign over us?" said his jealous 
brothers, as they intuitively saw, what Joseph 
did not realize, the true message of his dreams. 
Hatred and envy toward the innocent boy fill- 
ed their hearts, and it was not long before these 
things bore fruit, and they conspired together, 
saying, "We shall see what will become of his 
dreams !" And they did see ! How different it 
all would have been if Joseph's east wind had 
driven him away from God and made him sour, 
sullen, and bitter-hearted; or if, alone among 
strangers, he had said, "God has forgotten me, 
and I might as well fall in with the customs of 
this wicked Egypt." If that had been the 
case, we should never have heard the story of 
Joseph. It would not have been worth writing 
in the Bible. It was because the east wind 
drove him near to God that he became great. 

You may see the east wind in the life of 
Moses. It drives him away from the court of 
Egypt, drives him out a stranger in the desert, 
where for forty years he is an exile and a sheep- 
herder on the slopes of Mount Horeb ; but that 



THE EAST WIND 



17 



east wind of trial drives him into deeper com- 
munion with God and ends in his becoming the 
one chosen to lead his people out of Egypt and 
the mightiest law-giver of all time. 

Perhaps there is no life portrayed to us in 
the Bible where the east wind is illustrated with 
more signal power for beneficence in a human 
life than in the story of Jacob. Jacob was am- 
bitious. He was the younger son, but he 
wanted all the perquisites of the elder son. He 
took advantage of his brother's weakness, and 
he used deception and fraud to cheat his blind 
father. He thought he would cheat God by 
cunning. But when a man undertakes to do 
that, then it is that God takes a hand, and he 
is never at a loss for means to use. In this case 
he used the anger of Esau. There was murder 
in the air. Esau threatened his brother's life, 
and he was tftie kind of man to do the deed. So 
Jacob fled for his life across the desert. The 
east wind blew hard and terribly upon him, and 
by the time he came to Bethel, lonely and home- 
sick, with his pride broken, he was ready for 
that wonderful vision in which he saw the lad- 
der of heaven set down at his feet, and the 



18 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



angels coming and going, and God's assurance 
that he had not completely cast him away. 

But it takes more than one vision to cleanse 
a heart like Jacob's. The east wind continued 
to blow on Jacob. He had been a deceiver; 
now he had to take his own medicine. Laban 
showed him that that was a game at which two 
could play. His wages were changed ten 
times. At last, in despair, he fled away with 
his family and his herds. Finally, escaped 
from Laban, the news comes across the desert 
that Esau is coming to meet him with an army. 
What a cold, sharp blast that was out of the 
east into the face of Jacob! The trouble with 
Jacob was that up to this time, despite the 
vision at Bethel and all the mercy of God to 
him, he was a selfish, designing, self -centered 
man. His reliance was not really in God. He 
depended on himself. He expected to win by 
matching cunning with cunning. But now it 
seemed to him that he was to meet his due. 
He could not meet Esau with any hope of con- 
tending with him. He deserved only death at 
the hands of Esau, and so far as he was able to 
see, Esau was determined to get even with him. 
Ruin, only ruin, stared him in the face. That 



THE EAST WIND 



19 



was the day that Jacob's fate was in the bal- 
ance, and his salvation was that this east wind 
drove him to God. The great night of Jacob's 
life was when, at Jabbok Ford, he went out 
into the darkness alone to pray to God. He 
had no soldiers, he had no arms, he could not 
fight, and there was no way of escaping Esau 
by cunning. And I doubt not that it seemed 
to Jacob that this was poetic justice — that after 
the way he had treated his brother his brother 
should now slay him. And so, in this awful 
hour of darkness, his sin against his brother 
came back and stared him in the face and drove 
him out alone into the night. 

Oh, if a man will only be driven to God, the 
east wind is a blessed wind ! That night God's 
angel came and wrestled with Jacob. All night 
the struggle went on. It is hard for selfishness 
to surrender. It is hard for a man just to give 
up to God and let him have his entire way in 
the heart. Again and again the angel said to 
Jacob, "Let me go, the day breaketh." But 
Jacob realized now that in God was his only 
hope, and so, at last, he hung on to the angel 
and cried, "I will not let thee go, except thou 
bless me." The angel touched him on the thigh 



-20 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



and left him limping and crippled, but left 
him full of peace, and on the morrow he went 
forward to reconciliation with his brother. 
Henceforth, he had a new name. He was no 
longer Jacob, but Israel, because, as a prince, 
he had power with God and with man, and had 
prevailed. 

Some of you are in the midst of an east wind. 
You have sinned against God. You have lived 
your own selfish life. You have gone the 
way of life, depending largely on your own 
strength. You have used religion, if at all, as 
a sort of adornment or decoration. You have 
patronized God. You have been willing to 
throw a crumb now and then to some of the 
great forces by which God helps men and is 
blessing the world, but down deep in the center 
of your own being you are as self -centered as 
was Jacob. But the east wind, it may be, has 
already blown in your face. It may be in your 
business, it may be in your health, it may be 
among your friends; ah, man is so vulnerable 
that there are a thousand windows through 
which the east wind of God may smite him and 
break his heart and make him know his weak- 
ness. Oh, my friend, if you feel the east wind, 



THE EAST WIND 



21 



do not stiffen your neck like Ephraim, or like 
Tyre; but, like Jacob, surrender and let your 
trials bring you to God. 

Sorrow and trial are sure to come to us all. 
Even Christ was made perfect through suffer- 
ing, that he might be our Savior. Gay and 
indifferent as some of you are now, you will 
come to your Gethsemane. God grant that, 
when it comes, or if you are there now, you may 
find God there, and angels there to minister 
to you, as did Jesus ! 

"In golden youth, when seems the earth 
A summer land for singing mirth, 
When souls are glad and hearts are light 
And not a shadow lurks in sight, 
We do not know it, but there lies 
Somewhere, veiled under evening skies, 
A garden each must some time see, 

Gethsemane, Gethsemane, 

Somewhere his own Gethsemane. 

"With joyous steps we go our ways, 
Love lends a halo to the days. 
Light sorrows sail like clouds, afar, 
We laugh and say how strong we are, 
We hurry on, and, hurrying, go 
Close to the border-land of woe 
That waits for you and waits for me, 

Gethsemane, Gethsemane, 

Forever waits Gethsemane. 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"Down shadowy lanes, across strange streams, 
Bridged over by our broken dreams, 
Behind the misty cape of years, 
Close to the great salt font of tears 
The garden lies; strive as you may 
You can not miss it in your way. 

All paths that have been or shall be 
Pass somewhere through Gethsemane. 

"All those who journey, soon or late 
Must pass within the garden's gate; 
Must kneel alone in darkness there 
And battle with some fierce despair. 
God pity those who can not say — - 
'Not mine, but Thine'; who only pray, 
'Let this cup pass', and can not see 
The purpose of Gethsemane. 
Gethsemane, Gethsemane, 
God help us through Gethsemane!" 



THE NORTH WIND— THE WIND 
THAT PURIFIES CHARACTER 

"A stormy wind came out of the north, a great cloud, 
with a fire infolding itself, and a brightness round about 
it, and out of the midst thereof as it were glowing metal, 
out of the midst of the fire."— Ezek. 1 : 4. 

THIS is a wonderful vision. It is a great 
windstorm from the north — the cloud car- 
ried by the stern blast of the north wind. As 
it draws near, it is seen that there is a fire in the 
midst of the cloud, and in the midst of the fire, 
infolded in it as in a furnace, there is the 
glowing metal that has been melted in the fierce 
heat for some future fashioning. The sugges- 
tion is apparent and of the greatest teaching 
value. We have studied the east wind as a 
wind from God, the breath of Jehovah blowing 
out of the wilderness upon Ephrairn, drying up 
all the selfish fountains of joy and all human 
sources of power. We have studied its blow- 
ing on Tyre in the day of her glory when she 
was the commercial center of the world, and 
noted that the man or the people who will not 

23 



24 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



be driven by the east wind of God to repen- 
tance and righteousness is sure to be broken 
under its stern judgment. 

And now we come to this north wind. It 
also is the breath of Jehovah. It is not only 
necessary that a man should lose his self- 
dependence — that he should come to recognize 
the fact that his strength is in God — but the 
heart must be purified, the motives and pur- 
poses of life must be refined and cleansed, in 
order that he may be in harmony with his God. 
The lesson is clear that the north wind brings 
with it the fire of God to melt the hard metals 
of the soul and refine and fashion them after 
the divine plan. 

Did you ever look through a foundry? Did 
you note the great piles of scrap-iron — 'heaps 
of columns, broken, bent, split, shattered pieces 
of iron — gathered there to be melted? Have 
you stood by and watched while they tapped a 
furnace and seen the molten metal flowing out 
in a stream of fire, sending up a sputter of 
sparks whiter than the stars ? There is the long 
row of men, faces sweating and sooty under the 
strange glare of the fire, pushing their long- 
handled ladles under the white stream to carry 



THE NORTH WIND 



2o 



the melted metal to be run into the molds. 
And when you saw that, you knew that all 
those great heaps of scrap-iron, all those ugly, 
twisted, and marred fragments, would some 
day go into that same furnace to be melted 
over, and come out to be molded into beautiful, 
shapely pillars. So God's purpose in the north 
wind is to bring to our souls the furnace of 
discipline, the refining fire that shall melt down 
our stubbornness and our selfishness, shall 
make us submissive to him, shall purge away 
the dross, and shall cleanse us of every evil 
thing, that the divine Christ looking into our 
hearts may see his own image reflected there. 

I. I think we understand Scripture truth 
better when we see it incarnated in a human 
life. When we studied the work of the east 
wind, we studied its influence on Joseph and 
Moses, and still more at length in the evolution 
of the character of Jacob. We saw the fierce 
blast of that east wind that drove Jacob in his 
young manhood into exile. Then again and 
again it blew upon him mitil at Jabbok Ford, 
in his middle age, it drove him into the arms of 
his God in complete surrender. 

In studying the north wind as the one which 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



purifies character, I am sure that we could 
find no more typical human life than that of 
David. What a contrast there is between the 
youth of David and the youth of Jacob ! Jacob 
seems to have been a selfish, cunning, deceiving 
creature; but David's youth was very differ- 
ent. You will search in vain for anything to 
rebuke in all of David's younger days. He 
followed the sheep upon the hills. His faith 
in God was as simple as the life he lived. He 
prayed for and received strength with which 
to fight the wild beasts that threatened his 
flock. He seems to have had no selfish ambi- 
tion. When the prophet came out to select 
some one who should be anointed king, all the 
other boys of the family of Jesse were on hand. 
Each, no doubt, cherished some secret hope 
that he might be selected. But David did not 
appear. He was at his work in the hills, and 
they had to send for him and bring him in, and 
it is probable that he was more amazed than 
his brethren when the divine selection was made 
known, the holy horn of oil was lifted above 
his head, and he was anointed king. Take his 
early relations to Saul, his battle with Goliath, 
his friendship with Jonathan, his life after- 



THE NORTH WIND 



27 



ward when he was in that difficult role of a 
popular national hero, and you will find noth- 
ing to rebuke. He was modest, unassuming, 
faithful, true to God and to his duty. David's 
temptations and his sins came later. 

David is a striking illustration of a great 
truth which is not preached about as much as it 
should be; that is, the insidious dangers and 
temptations that come to middle-aged people. 
We have multiplied sermons and volumes of 
warning concerning the dangers and perils of 
youth where we preach one concerning the 
perils of middle life. But the perils of youth 
are not more real than those peculiar dangers 
that ambush the pathway which men and 
women travel in the noontide of human life. 
Perhaps it is because men are off their guard. 
Youth is guarded by father and mother and 
teachers and older friends. The child and the 
youth are continually reminded of the impor- 
tance of right living; but when a man steps 
out beyond guardianship and enters into the 
competitions of life on his own responsibility, 
he ofttimes seems to feel a sense of freedom 
which runs into license, and he falls a victim 
to sins of which his youth gave no prophecy. 



23 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Then, if the discipline of God's north wind will 
not save him, there is no salvation for him. 

The story of David is full of the north wind 
with its purifying fires. How hot must have 
been the furnace which it brought to David in 
the jealousy of Saul! How his heart sank 
within him that day when Saul threw the jave- 
lin at him, and the iron which missed his body 
entered into his soul in the conviction that Saul 
meant to kill him ! What a tender touch there 
is in that story of the meeting of Jonathan and 
David in the forest, after Saul had attacked 
David ! How they hung on each other's necks 
and wept ! They seemed to have had a premo- 
nition that it was their last meeting. They 
were never again to enjoy the bliss of friendly 
association. You can see how this melted 
David's heart and how fierce was the fire of his 
anguish, when you listen to his heart-cry on the 
battlefield of Gilboa, where Jonathan perished : 

"I am distressed for tliee, my brother Jonathan: 
Very pleasant hast thou been unto me; 
Thy love to me was wonderful, 
Passing the love of women." 

And you may see something of the purify- 
ing influence of that refining fire of sorrow 



THE NORTH WIND 



29 



when David, at last established in his kingdom, 
inquires of those about him, "Is there yet any 
left of the house of Saul, that I may show him 
kindness for Jonathan's sake?" And when 
they told him of Mephibosheth, the crippled 
son of Jonathan, David brought that repre- 
sentative of his dead friend into his royal home 
and gave him a place at the king's table in 
proof of his undying love for Jonathan. Car- 
dinal Xewman saw in David's sorrow over 
Jonathan the heat of the furnace that refined 
his soul: 

"0 heart of fire ! misjudged by wilful man, 

Thou flower of Jesse's race ! 
What woe was thine, when thou and Jonathan 

Last greeted face to face ! 
He doomed to die, thou on us to impress 
The portent of a blood-stained holiness. 

"Yet it was well; — for so, 'mid cares of rule 

And crime's encircling tide, 
A spell was o'er thee, zealous one, to cool 

Earth-joy and kingly pride; 
With battle-scene and pageant, prompt to blend 
The pale, calm specter of a blameless friend." 

But the mid-day of David's career is stained 
and marred by the sins of strength and pas- 
sion. Gifted, magnetic, full of romance and 



30 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



heroism, he falls into grievous sins and his 
heart turns away from God. The formal serv- 
ice of God went on as before, but there was no 
longer communion of soul. That young shep- 
herd who had prayed to God as simply and 
naturally as a child prattles to its mother, who 
had sung his morning psalm on the hills of 
Bethlehem reverently and lovingly and exult- 
ingly as the lark sings on his mounting wing, 
had lost heart out of his worship because sin 
had made a black cloud between his soul and 
God. Then came the north wind. How 
fiercely it blew! The rebellion of Absalom 
arises. David had seen it coming, but could 
not believe it. At last it comes down on him 
with fierce blasts and he is driven from his 
capital city, and as he comes along toward the 
Jordan, near the crossing, Shimei, one of the 
hill men, who has long hated David, comes 
down out of the hills to humiliate him. and 
throws stones at him and hurls on him insults 
and curses. The people who are with David 
want to kill Shimei, but David knows that it 
is the north wind from God and cries out in 
anguish: "Let him alone, let him curse; the 
Lord hath bidden him/' 



THE NORTH WIND 



31 



A little later comes that other day when 
David is watching and waiting for news from 
the battle, and is afraid to hear the news. If 
Absalom wins, it is his own death warrant, and 
if his own hosts win, then he fears for Absa- 
lom, his wicked son, whom he still loves. Is 
there anything more pitiful in all literature 
than David the king watching there and wait- 
ing, hoping against 'hope, until at last the blow 
falls and he climbs the stairs, groaning forth 
those heart-breaking sentences: "O my son 
Absalom, my -son, my son Absalom ! Would 
I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 
son!" The literature of grief has no language 
so full of pathos. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis, in what is perhaps 
his finest poem, paints the picture of David's 
farewell to Absalom. He shows us David 
standing by the bier of his son and crying 
aloud: 

"Alas! my noble boy! that thou shouldst die! 

Thou who wert made so beautifully fair! 
That death should settle in thy glorious eye, 

And leave his stillness in this clustering hair! 
How could he mark thee for the silent tomb ! 

My proud boy, Absalom! 



3-2 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"Cold is thy brow, my son! and I am chill, 
As to my bosom I have tried to press thee ! 
How was I wont to feel thy pulses thrill, 

Like a rich harp-string, yearning to caress thee, 
And hear thy sweet, 'My father !' from these dumb 
And cold lips, Absalom! 

"But death is on thee. I shall hear the gush 

Of music, and the voices of the young; 
And life will pass me in the mantling blush, 

And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung; — 
But thou no more, with thy sweet voice, shalt come 
To meet me, Absalom ! 

"And oh! when I am stricken, and my heart, 
Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken, 

How will its love for thee, as I depart, 
Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token ! 

It were so sweet, amid death's gathering gloom, 
To see thee, Absalom! 

"And now, farewell ! 'Tis hard to give thee up, 
With death so like a gentle slumber on thee; — 

And thy dark sin ! — Oh ! I could drink the cup, 
If from this woe its bitterness had won thee. 

May God have called thee, like a wanderer, home, 
My lost boy, Absalom !" 

It was in such a furnace that the sinful heart 
of David was melted and his sins purged, and 
he came forth a ransomed and redeemed man 
into a new life of humility and faith and com- 
munion with God. And when David went back 
again to Jerusalem and they built a ferry-boat 



THE NORTH WIND 



33 



(the only one mentioned in the Bible) to carry 
the king's household over the Jordan, swollen 
by some sudden flood, the first man that met 
him on the other side was Shimei, who had 
cursed, and insulted, and thrown stones at him 
on the day when he had fled from Jerusalem 
for his life. David's friends wanted him to con- 
demn Shimei to death, but David would not 
listen to it. He felt that it was through God's 
mercy that he himself was spared, and he ex- 
claims, "Shall there any man be put to death 
this day in Israel? For do not I know that I 
am this day king over Israel?" And he turned 
in forgiveness to the poor wretch kneeling at 
his feet. My friends, it makes us wondrous 
kind and brotherly and charitable and forgiv- 
ing to others when we feel that we owe every- 
thing we have to the mercy and forgiveness 
of God. 

Some of you are in the midst of the storm, 
and the north wind has brought the furnace of 
fire. You are in the furnace now, it may be, 
and God is seeking to refine your nature and 
make you a nobler man or a truer woman. Re- 
member, the furnace will mean either salvation 
or still greater ruin. 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



II. The north wind can purify only the soul 
that surrenders itself to be melted and shaped 
by the divine fire of trial. Everything depends 
upon the spirit in which we receive the disci- 
pline of God. If we are rebellious against 
God , we get no benefit from life's trials. Some 
people are soured by trouble, others are made 
sweeter than the violets in springtime. Under 
the trial some faces are darkened by frowns, 
others are lightened and illuminated by great 
faith. When the north wind blows, some are 
hardened by their sorrows and others are soft- 
ened and become mellow and tender. Some 
men stiffen themselves against the blast and 
are broken by disaster; others, yielding to it, 
receive its strength into themselves and are 
energized and magnified by the north wind and 
the refining fires. If we confidingly yield our 
lives to be guided of God, then we can be sure 
that God will bring good out of everything 
that comes to us. Even out of death, God can 
bring good. Even in sickness and in grief 
God is able to bring great compensations and 
blessings. From loss and anguish and poverty 
there is often derived infinite blessing; and to 



THE NORTH WIND 



35 



the heart that trusts God good will come out 
of every furnace of trial. 

George Macdonald, the poet-novelist, gives 
this little fragment of conversation in one of 
his books. A woman says, "I wonder why 
God made me," and she continues very bit- 
terly, "I am sure I don't know where was the 
use of making me." *To which her friend re- 
plies, "Perhaps not much yet; but then he 
hasn't done with you yet. He is making you 
now, and you don't like it." 

I am sure it would give us more patience 
with ourselves and with God if we would 
always keep that in mind. We are now in the 
process of being made, and God is at work on 
us and has not yet finished with us. If we 
surrender ourselves to him, everything shall 
work together for our good ; and when Ave see 
Christ clearly in glory, we shall be like him. 

The heart submissive and yielding to the 
north wind that carries the heavenly fire is able 
always to come off victorious and triumphant 
in spite of the handicaps of life. A few years 
ago there passed away from earth in Edin- 
burgh a famous preacher, Dr. George Mathe- 
son, who Sir Robertson Nicoll declares was the 



36 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



greatest Scotchman since Thomas Chalmers. 
He is an excellent illustration of greatness 
through submission of the soul to God under 
the stress of life. When he was twenty years 
of age he left a surgeon's office with these 
words echoing in his ears: "Better see your 
friends quickly, for soon the darkness will set- 
tle, and you will see them no more forever." 
That was the doctor's way of telling him that 
at the very morning of his career he was to lose 
his sight and go on through life blind. His 
biographer tells us that when the darkness came 
he shut himself up and gave one whole day to 
communion with God. Then he came forth 
sweet of spirit, courageous of soul, happy of 
heart, with his suffering turned to song. And 
it was out of a furnace like that that Matheson 
came to sing: 

"0 Light that foil Vest all my way, 
I yield my flickering torch to thee; 
My heart restores its borrowed ray, 
That in thy sunshine's blaze its day 
May brighter, fairer be. 

"0 Joy that seekest me through pain, 
I can not close my heart to thee; 

I trace the rainbow through the rain, 

And feel the promise is not vain 
That mom shall tearless be. 



THE NORTH WIND 



37 



"0 Cross that liftest up my head, 

I dare not ask to fly from thee ; 
I lay in dust life's giory dead, 
And from the ground there blossoms red, 

Life that shall endless be." 

Life is sanctified and glorified by struggles. 
We should not fear the north wind. We should 
not feel that God is angry with us because it 
has blown upon us and infolded us in its fiery 
heart, but we should rather feel that this is a 
sure testimony of his love for us and his pur- 
pose to develop within us a greater, richer life. 
The noble thing for us to do is not to try to 
escape our struggle and our burdens, but to 
meet them faithfully and seek to get out of 
them that which God means for us. Not one 
of us but at some time in our lives has had a 
fellow-feeling with the psalmist when he ex- 
claimed, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove. 
For then I would fly away and be at rest. Lo, 
then would I wander far off and lodge in the 
wilderness." We have felt, as he did, under 
the stress of our burden that we should like to 
get just as far away from it as the winds could 
carry us, with the swiftest wings that ever were 
made. But that spirit is ignoble, and in our 



38 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



better hours we know that it is cowardly. One 
of the old scholars, commenting on the psalm, 
said that it would have been far more honor- 
able for the man to have asked for the strength 
of an ox to bear his trials than for the wings 
of a dove to flee from them. 

III. The final heartening thought is that we 
never make conquest of ourselves through 
struggle and refining heat that we do not ob- 
tain victories for others as well. One of the 
sweet and saintly souls of a generation of 
American Christians was Fanny Crosby. She 
knew what the north wind meant, and she 
knew the furnace of fire which it carried; but 
what gracious blessings she got for herself and 
for others out of the blast ? A lady at North- 
field asked a friend of hers who knew Fanny 
Crosby to carry this story to her: 

''Twelve years ago I was assailed by a great temptation 
at an important crisis in my life, and although I had been 
a professing Christian, I was on the point of deciding for 
the wrong course. In this state of mind I entered a little 
chapel, not so much to hear the sermon as to listen to the 
singing, and most of all to think out my problem. I was so 
absorbed that I did not hear one word of the sermon; but 
when the soloist began to sing Fanny Crosby's sweet song, 
'I shall see him face to face/ my heart melted. It seemed 
that Grod had spoken to me through the voice of that song. 



THE NORTH WIND 



I decided at once to take the right path, and ever since I 
have felt that that hymn saved me. I have longed to see 
Fanny Crosby. If you ever meet her, please tell her the 
story for me." 

Fanny Crosby 'had yielded herself so com- 
pletely to the furnace of trial that refined and 
purified that she had come face to face with 
her Lord and was able to bring him face to face 
with others. It inay be so with every one of 
us. God help us so to come face to face and 
heart to heart in fellowship with Christ that 
we shall never lack his sure guidance. Then 
we shall be able to sing with Robert Burdette : 

"There is no path in this desert waste, 

For the winds have swept the shifting sands. 
The trail is blind where the storms have raced, 

And a stranger, I, in these fearsome lands. 
But I journey with a lightsome tread; 

I do not falter nor turn aside, 
For I see his figure just ahead — ■ 

He knows the way — my Guide. 

"There is no path in this trackless sea; 

No map is lined on the restless waves; 
The ocean snares are strange to me, 

Where the unseen wind in its fury raves. 
But it matters naught ; my sails are set, 

And my swift prow tosses the seas aside, 
For the changeless stars are stedfast yet, 

And I sail by his star-blazed trail — my Guide. 



THE WINDS OF GOD 

"There is no way in this starless night; 

There is naught but cloud in the inky skies 
The black night smothers me, left and right, 

I stare with a blind man's straining eyes. 
But my steps are firm, for I can not stray; 

The path to my feet seems light and wide; 
For' I hear his voice — ( I am the Way !' 

And I sing as I follow him on — my Guide." 



THE WEST WIND— THE WIND 
THAT INSPIRES GROWTH 
AND FERTILITY 

"When ye see a eloud rising in the west straightway ye 
say, There cometh a shower; and so it cometh to pass." — 
Luke 12 : 54. 

JESUS has thus stamped the west wind as 
forever joined to the season of showers. 
The east wind with its driving blast and the 
north wind with its cleansing force may blow 
for a time, but to the full round year there must 
come the time of the west wind that shall speak 
to buried bulbs and awaken all nature out of 
death-like sleep. It is sometimes pictured most 
beautifully in the Scriptures. The psalmist 
sings : 

"He giveth snow like wool ; 
He scattereth the hoar frost like ashes. 
He casteth forth his ice like morsels : 
Who can stand before his cold?" 

And then the singer beholds the cloud com- 
ing out of the west and its miracle of the west 
wind, and he sings again: 

41 



42 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"He sendeth out bis word and melteth them : 
He causeth his wind to blow, and tbe waters flow." 

In the beautiful Song of Solomon we have 
one of the most realistic pictures of the trans- 
formation that comes under the reign of the 
west wind. The royal singer bursts forth in 
exclamation : 

"For, lo, tbe winter is past ; 
Tbe rain is over and gone; 
Tbe flowers appear on tbe eartb; 
Tbe time of tbe singing of birds is come, 
And tbe voice of tbe turtle-dove is beard in our land; 
Tbe. fig-tree ripenetb ber green figs, 
And tbe vines are in blossom; 
Tbey give fortb their fragrance." 

I. The west wind is the wind of the spring- 
time. It is the wind of inspiration. It speaks 
to the crocus bulbs sometimes under the snow, 
and they awaken and push their courageous 
tips out through the icy covering. It speaks to 
the Jack-in-the-pulpits in the swamps and the 
wild cabbage in the marshes. It speaks to the 
sap deep hidden in the tree roots, and the sap 
comes pulsating up through the great stems 
and out to the finger-tips of the long branches. 
It speaks to the red bud, and its flaming banner 



THE WEST WIND 



43 



waves iai the leafless forests. It speaks to the 
wild crab apple, and its fragrant blossoms 
clothe the ragged tree with glory. It speaks 
to the south hillside, and the violet roots hear 
it whistling through the trees, and carpets of 
white and blue spread abroad as if in a night 
to prophesy the splendor of the coming sum- 
mer time. The robin and the redbird hear its 
message and come to sing a glad refrain. But, 
above all, it speaks to the grass in the pasture 
and plain and prairie and in the little glade in 
the woods, until everywhere, from the edge of 
the sea to the top of the mountains, the grass- 
roots hear the call of the west wind, and the 
whole world turns green with freshness, with 
the courage and the youthful vigor of eternal 
hope. After all, the grass is the real glory of 
the springtime. Flowers, whether blooming 
here and there in the sward or in the woods, 
and even the leaf-crowned and blossoming 
trees, are only occasional decorations. It 
would be a barren, desolate world if the west 
wind did not know how to call the common, 
every- day grass out of winter into springtime 
hope, clothing the whole world with a green 
robe of beauty and gladness. When James 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Buckham died, not long ago, his friends found 
among his papers an unpublished poem called 
"The Prayer of the Grass" which beautifully 
sets forth what we owe in thanks to God for 
the grass of the springtime: 

"0 God of heaven! hear my prayer, 
Who doth thy fields clothe everywhere. 

"I thank thee, Lord, for sun and sky, 
For all delights that border nigh 
The mothering earth; for nightly dew; 
For boughs that sway across the blue; 
For ample storehouse of the plain; 
For sweet refreshment of the rain; 
For joy of growth; for every day's 
Antiphonal of love and praise. 
I thank thee for the thrill of spring, 
That gladdens every living thing; 
For summer's glory, and the crown 
Of autumn's harvest gold and brown. 
I thank thee, too, for winter's rest, 
And skies in sober drapings dressed. 
With all that is, in glad accord, 
For life's full round I thank thee, Lord ! 

"God of the stars, how lowly I 
To senseless dust and stones so nigh! 
My roots the creeping things enfold ; 
My head is pillowed on the mold; 
Yet thou, the God of sky and peak, 
Of wings that soar, of lips that speak, 
God of the lights beyond the sun, 
And systems into star-mesh spun, 



THE WEST WIND 



4-5 



Thou dost regard the lowly grass 
Trodden of cattle when they pass, 
This is the joy that doth me raise 
Above my lowly lot and place. 
Thou knowest every blade of mine, 
And shapest it with care divine. 
Thou dost protect each flow'r that springs, 
And robe more royally than kings. 
Yea, tho the crushed blade never grows, 
Thy loving heart in heaven knows. 

"'Tis beautiful to be thy grass, 
And feel thee nigh, and hear thee pass, 
And do thy will, and seek thy praise, 
And live to please thee all the days. 
My humble needs to thee I bring; 
My needs be my petitioning. 
Thou knowest, Master, all and best. 
Do as thou wilt, is my request. 
Accept my praise, and hear my prayer, 
Who dost thy fields clothe everywhere \ n 

Now in all this we have a beautiful figure of 
what God is all the while doing in human life. 
Men go their own way, headstrong and selfish, 
forgetful of God, and the east wind humiliates 
them and drives them back from their own 
dependence upon themselves. The north 
wind's fierce blast sweeps through the life to 
separate the chaff from the wheat, or, to use 
the figure which Ezekiel saw, to melt down the 
metals of the soul in the furnace of trial until 



46 THE WINDS OF GOD 

it is submissive to God. Then the west wind, 
with its inspiration to growth and fertility, 
comes forth to work its beautiful transforma- 
tion. In a wonderful paragraph in the thirty- 
fourth chapter of Ezekiel you may see what 
God has in his heart for the man who, turning 
from his selfish and evil way, opens his life to 
the west wind of hope: "I will make with 
them a covenant of peace, and I will cause evil 
beasts to cease out of the land ; and they shall 
dwell securely in the wilderness, and sleep in 
the woods. And I will make them and the 
places round about my hill a blessing; and I 
will cause the shower to come down in its sea- 
son; there shall be showers of blessing. And 
the tree of the field shall yield its fruit, and the 
earth shall yield its increase, and they shall be 
secure in their land ; and they shall know that 
I am Jehovah, when I have broken the bars of 
their yoke." 

II. The west wind is the wind which brings 
mingled showers and sunshine. It brings some 
days cold and raw, but they too are necessary 
for growth, and it brings other days warm and 
gentle and soft with kindly showers, and other 
days that are bright and full of the sympathy 



THE WEST WIND 



47 



of heaven shining from the sun in the clear sky 
above, and appealing to every living thing to 
do its best and achieve its full career. 

Most of us have a sort of haunting dream of 
a time when there will be no bad weather in 
our lives. We imagine that if everything could 
go just to suit our desires, life would be at its 
best; but I imagine we would not find it so. 
I saw the other day a pretty story of Abraham 
Lincoln. It was written by Lucy Randall 
Comfort in The Magazine of American His- 
tory. Nearly fifty years ago she went with 
another lady to call on Abraham Lincoln. It 
was at a crowded morning reception in the 
White House, and the two ladies found them- 
selves in the presence of that great, sad-faced, 
homely man. Suddenly, as they looked at him, 
they became shy and timid and dumb. Then 
one of them burst forth with, "We have been 
enjoying your beautiful roses so much, Mr. 
President!" They had just come out of the 
conservatory. The moment she said it, the 
woman thought she had said an idiotic thing, 
but the deep-set, wistful eyes of the President 
lighted in an instant, and his smile grew more 
gravely sweet. "Fragrant, aren't they?" an- 



IS 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



swered Mr. Lincoln, and he seemed to muse on 
it, and said, "Yes, yes, but it is possible, tho 
you ladies mightn't believe it, to have too much 
even of the fragrance of roses/' By this time 
the ushers and the President's wife were doing 
their best to keep him from holding up the line 
any longer with his conversation. But paying 
no attention to them, the great, sad-faced man 
went on: "Twice, yes twice, I have been in a 
place where sweetness became a positive sur- 
feit. Talking of roses, first, I remember once 
after a long day's drive through the south of 
Georgia I came to a solitary place where two 
roads met. Just about sunset it was — and 
there in a triangle were roses, hundreds of 
roses, perhaps thousands, all in bloom, and the 
perfume was overpowering. It made me feel 
faint, just a little, you know. Perhaps a house 
had been there once. Anyway the roses were 
there. And once, down South, I rode on horse- 
back at night through a patch of dense woods 
where the Alabama nightingales were singing, 
scores and scores of 'em, and calling to each 
other. There is no bird music in the world 
sweeter than that of the Alabama nightingale, 
but I felt that I could not have endured it 



THE WEST WIND 



49 



much longer. It was like a pain. So you 
see" — seeming to rouse suddenly to the fact 
of his wife's impatience and the waiting line 
beyond — "there can be too much, even of flow- 
ers and music. I am glad you liked the roses, 
ladies!" Even fragrant roses and sweet-sing- 
ing nightingales are more highly appreciated 
when they are not in too great profusion and 
where they come mingled with other things. 

So God's west wind in human life brings us 
both pain and joy; but through the mingling 
of them, as sunshine and cloud are mingled in 
the springtime, God gives us that sweetest 
thing in human life — the gift of sympathy. 
For we must remember that if we had no pain 
or sorrow we would have no sympathy. We 
would not know how to sympathize with oth- 
ers, for we would have no way to measure, or 
judge, or conceive of their condition when they 
were in trouble. Robert Browning illustrates 
this in one of his poems. He describes an Arab 
talking about a king. He was abusing him, 
saying all sorts of evil things about him, de- 
claring there was nothing good in him, and 
that he would not listen to anything in his 
defense. But the man to whom the Arab was 



50 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



speaking said, "Have you heard that he is suf- 
fering from an incurable disease?" The Arab 
changed his tone. "Poor man! is that so? Can 
nothing be done?" All his hatred and cruel 
anger died in a moment because of his awak- 
ened sympathy. So the trials of life contain 
rich blessings, fraught with inspiration, if our 
hearts are open to all of God's winds. I sym- 
pathize with some one who sings: 

"The world, they say, is gettin' old, an' weary as can be, 
But write me down as sayin', it's good enough for me ! 
It's good enough, with all its grief, its pleasure and its pain, 
An' there's a ray of sunshine for every drop of rain ! 

"They stumble in the lonesome dark, they cry for light to see, 
But write me down as sayin', it's light enough for me ! 
It's light enough to lead us on from where we faint and 
fall, 

An' the hilltops nearest heaven wear the brightest erown 
of all. 

"They talk about the fadin' hopes that mock the years to be, 
But write me down as sayin' there's hope enough for me, 
Over the old world's wailin' the sweetest music swells, 
In the stormiest nights I listen and hear the bells — the 
bells ! 

"This world o' God's is brighter than we ever dreamed or 
know; 

Its burden's growin' lighter an' it's love that makes it so. 



THE WEST WIND 



51 



An* I'm thankful that I'm living when Love's blessedness 
I see, 

'Neath a heaven that's forgivin' vrhen the bells ring home 
to me." 

III. Perhaps no typical character given us 
in the Scriptures illustrates so clearly as does 
that of Paul the blowing of these first three 
winds into a single human life and their final 
result in fertility of soul and in beauty and 
richness of character. As Saul of Tarsus, self- 
ish and bigoted, full of that stifT-neckecl ego- 
tism that brooks no interference, Paul went on 
his way toward Damascus. There was mur- 
der in his heart. He meant to hale men and 
women to prison and to the executioner's block. 
He was fresh from tasting blood in the death 
of Stephen, the man of the angel face. When 
I think of that scene of the mob laying their 
clothes down at Saul's feet, and of his standing 
calmly by watching and listening while they 
stoned that beautiful young saint and gnashed 
on him with their teeth, until, falling to the 
earth, the dying young martyr cried out to 
God, "Lay not this sin to their charge"; and 
when I remember that even then his heart did 
not relent, but he must go on to Damascus to 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



see other sights like that — I do not wonder that 
Paul said he was the chief of sinners. 

But you know the story — how on the public 
highway at noontide the east wind struck him 
straight in the face and brought him to the 
ground blind and helpless and drove him to 
God. And if you follow the life of Paul after 
that, you will see how these winds intermingled 
in his wonderful life. See him that day in 
Philippi where he and Silas were stoned. Once 
he stood by and saw Stephen stoned to death. 
Now he himself is stoned until he falls bleeding 
and unconscious, and they carry him into the 
jail with his comrade. These bruised and 
bloody men they put in the dungeon, and 
wounded as they are, thrust their feet into the 
stocks. Surely the fierce north wind is blowing 
here. Yes, and it soon does its work. After a 
while they begin to talk to each other about 
their faith in God and in Jesus Christ their 
Savior. They remind each other of how the 
Master went to the cross counting it all joy 
because of the salvation he was to bring to 
to them. And as they think of these things, 
the west wind blows on their weary hearts and 
their courage is refreshed and their souls grow 



THE WEST WIND 



55 



glad, and at midnight they begin to sing — to 
sing songs of thanksgiving and gladness. The 
angels hear it on high and beg that they may 
come down with the power of an earthquake 
to shake the feet of God's saints loose from 
the stocks and throw open the prison doors. 
You know how these men came out and found 
the jailer ready to commit suicide, and how 
Paul, in his cheerful voice, cried out to him, 
and caught his attention, and won him to 
Christ then and there, so that not only the 
jailer but his entire household became Chris- 
tians through Paul's devotion and earnest 
fidelity to the Master. 

And this is a typical incident in the life of 
Paul. In his second letter to the .Corinthians 
you hear him rejoicing and thanking God for 
the combined blowing of the north and west 
winds through the circumstances of his life. 
He exclaims, "But in everything commending 
ourselves, as ministers of God, in much pa- 
tience, in affliction, in necessities, in distresses, 
in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in 
labors, in watchings, in fastings, in pureness, 
in knowledge, in longsuff ering, in kindness, in 
the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the 



5-1. 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



word of truth, in the power of God; by the 
armor of righteousness, on the right hand and 
on the left, by glory and dishonor, by evil re- 
port and good report; as deceivers, and yet 
true; as unknown, and yet well known; as 
dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and 
not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; 
as poor, yet making many rich; as having 
nothing, and yet possessing all things." Again 
in that same letter he tells us how the north 
wind blew upon him as a thorn in the flesh, a 
messenger of Satan to buffet him. And he says 
the reason for it was "That I should not be ex- 
alted overmuch." He tells us that this north 
wind drove him to God, and he besought the 
Lord again and again and yet again that he 
might be relieved from it ; but that in the shel- 
ter of the divine arms he heard God say, "My 
grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is 
made perfect in weakness." And Paul de- 
clares to us that under the inspiration of that 
divine voice he was able to say: "Most gladly, 
therefore, will I rather glory in my weaknesses, 
that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 
Wherefore, I take pleasure in weaknesses, in 
injury, in necessities, in persecutions, in dis- 



THE WEST WIND 



55 



tresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, 
then am I strong." 

Let us not miss the great blessing of our 
theme. All the winds have the same purpose 
in God's heart. The east wind that drives to 
God, the north wind that brings the furnace 
of trial, and the west wind that brings showers, 
mingled with sunshine, all have the same pur- 
pose, to bring purity and nobility to our souls 
and fertility to our characters and deeds, and 
make us the kind of men and women that will 
go about the earth like our Master, doing 
good. It is for us to open our hearts and bare 
our lives to the winds of God that they may 
work their loving purpose, unresisted in us. 



THE SOUTH WIND— THE WIND 
THAT BRINGS PEACE AND 
CHARM 

"Come, thou south (wind) ; blow upon my garden that the 
spices thereof may flow out." — Song of Solomon 4 : 16. 

THE south wind is the wind of the summer. 
The fierce east wind that strips life's 
branches to humility has wrought God's will. 
The cold blast from the north that pierces to 
the marrow and tries men's souls has passed. 
The blustering west wind, with mingled 
caresses and threatenings, quiets down as 
May turns its face toward June. Now comes 
the south wind, with its wonderful gift of color, 
to clothe the world with a charm out-rivaling 
all the dreams of man. The south wind and 
the sunshine are comrades, and under their 
alliance and fellowship all the fields of summer 
toil are clothed with beauty. Who is eloquent 
enough to describe the glory of summer? How 
beautiful is a ripened field of oats, white almost 
as the snow in winter ; and how rich and golden 
a field of wheat ready for the reaper ! And the 

56 



THE SOUTH WIND 



57 



corn! Sometimes as I have ridden along on 
the train through hundreds of miles of corn- 
fields, I have seemed to look out upon an army 
of knights of the olden times when men went 
to battle plumed and tasseled and adorned. 
Every corn-stalk growing out of the rich soil, 
with its nodding plume, its rustling draperies, 
and its great hanging ears of yellow gold, all 
colored as tho the chemistry of nature had 
nothing else to do but to make it glorious, is a 
thing of beauty. 

The south wind not only brings beauty, but 
it brings out the fragrance and spices of the 
summer world. Whoever knew a perfume 
sweeter than the breath of new-mown hay? 
And the gardens and the orchards, even the 
hedge-rows and the fence corners and the little 
pieces of swamp left in the marshy places un- 
tilled, grow beautiful and fragrant under the 
breath of the south wind. 

The birds and the animals which the south 
wind calls into activity as the marauders of 
the summer are handsomely adorned. The 
squirrels that work havoc in the edges of the 
wheat, the cherry-birds that take toll of the 
red fruit, and even the black crows — the high- 



58 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



way robbers of the corn-field — are handsome 
and picturesque. 

So it is that the south wind brings beauty 
and charm to all the summer world, not only in 
the fields but in the orchards where it colors 
plums and peaches and apples in fellowship 
with the sun. It is also the wind that broods 
over the climax of man's toil and soothes the 
world into peace and quiet. 

Here, then, we have our theme, our figures 
for the study of that divine influence which 
comes as the breath of God to ripen the spirit- 
ual graces and mature the fruits of the soul in 
a human life. 

I. The first message of our theme is the gra- 
cious influence of the abiding of the loving 
Christ in our hearts. Jesus tells us that if we 
abide in him and he in us, we shall bring forth 
much fruit and our fruit will come to perfec- 
tion. The Apostle John is the peculiar incar- 
nation in the Bible of what the south wind can 
do for a human soul. John was a quick-tem- 
pered, easily aroused man, who wanted to 
bring down fire from heaven to burn up whole 
towns when they did not please him; but the 
winds of God wrought upon his life until his 



THE SOUTH WIND 



59 



fruitful soul was prepared for the south wind 
of divine love. And it is John who tells us the 
sweetest things about the love of God. It is 
he who says, "God is love." It is he who tells 
us "God is light, and in him is no darkness at 
all." It is he who gives us the last book of the 
Bible and Whose loving heart saw wonderful 
visions of the triumph of our Lord. 

It is only through sincere sympathy and love 
in our relations to each other in this world 
that peace and charm can come to mankind. 
Sidney Lanier, in his beautiful symphony, 
brings out in strong lines the truth that life 
can be made harmonious and musical in the 
spirit of love only : 

"Life ! Life ! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, 
Love, love alone can pore 
On thy dissolving score 
Of harsh half-phrasings, 

Blotted ere writ, 
And double erasings 
Of chords most fit. 
"Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, 
May read my weltering palimpsest. 
To follow Time's dying melodies through, 
And never to lose the old in the new, 
And ever to solve the discords true — 
Love alone can do. 



60 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



' ; And ever Love hears the poor folks' crying, 
And ever Love hears the women sighing", 
And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, 
And ever wise childhood's deep implying, 
But never a trader's glozing and lying. 

"And yet shall Love himself be heard, 
Though long deferred, though long deferred: 
O'er the modem waste a dove hath whirred: 
Music is Love in search of a word." 

The south wind of God brings us that won- 
derful magic which no one understands. 
Altho our friends grow old and fade and 
lose their outer charms that clothed them when 
first our attachment drew us to them, yet, 
under its strange influence, they become 
dearer to us. There is a very beautiful story 
which tells the romance in the life of the 
English poet, Alfred Tennyson. In 1830, at 
Somersby Rectory, Arthur Hallam was stay- 
ing with the Tennysons and asked Emily 
S el wood to walk with him in the Fairy Wood. 
At a turn of the path they came upon Tenny- 
son, who at sight of the slender, beautiful girl 
of seventeen, moving "like a light across those 
woodland ways/' suddenly asked of her, "Are 
you a dryad or an oread wandering here?" But 
sweet as this is, the poem that he wrote to her 



THE SOUTH WIND 



0] 



sixty years later when she was seventy-seven 
is infinitely sweeter. Remembering that meet- 
ing as he faced the sunset, he sang: 

"'There on the top of the down, 

The wild heather round me and over me June's bright blue, 
When I look'd at the bracken so bright and the heather so 
I thought to myself I would offer this book to you, [brown, 
This, and my love together, 
To you that are seventy-seven, 

With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven, 
And a fancy as summer-new 

As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather." 

Sir Robertson Nicoll, commenting on this 
tribute of Tennyson's, declares that in all love 
poetry the grandest line he ever saw are these 
words, "To you, that are seventy-seven." 

It is the south wind which, bringing us into 
fellowship with other souls, revealing to us the 
kinship and brotherhood of our human lives, 
helps us to know the love of God. It is this 
same apostle of the south wind, the beloved 
disciple John, who tells us, "We know that we 
have passed out of death unto life because 
we love the brethren." And again he says, "If 
a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, 
he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother 
whom he hath seen, can not love God whom he 



62 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



hath not seen. And this commandment have 
we from him, that he who loveth God love his 
brother also." 

Some poet sings of love as "The Revealer." 
This beautifully brings out the way in which 
our human love brings us into the love of God : 

"Ye are always singing the good Lord's praise, 

And publishing all that his hand 
Has wrought for you in the bygone days, 
And all that his heart has planned. 

"And verily all that ye say is true; 
For I gratefully confess 
That whatever the Lord has done for you 
He has done for me no less. 

"But when I remember the weary ways 
Which my feeble feet have trod, 

And the human love which all my days 
Has helped me along the road, 

Then the love of man is my song of praise 
As well as the love of G-od. 

"And I hardly think I would ever have seen 
The love of God so clear, 
Unless the love of man had been 
So visible and near." 

II. The south wind is the wind of God's 
quickening spirit. The east wind stript us 
of our self-dependence and drove us back to 



THE SOUTH WIND 



63 



God for strength; the north wind brought us 
to God's furnace of trial in which the soul 
might be refined and lose its base alloy ; in the 
west wind there came a season of fruitfulness, 
a time of bursting bulbs and opening buds, the 
beginning of helpfulness and usefulness in the 
service of God; in the south wind we find a 
time when the spirit of the ever-living God, 
blowing upon our hearts, warms our affections. 
Being already chastened by the north wind of 
trial and inspired by the west wind of hope, 
we shall have that conscious presence of God 
with us, that charm of personal devotion to our 
Lord, that warmth of love for him and for 
others which shall enable us to bring God into 
saving relations with other souls. 

Our supreme illustration must be in the 
actual story of God's doings with men. Let us 
note the relation of the south wind to the entire 
group of early Christians. If you take up 
your gospels and the Acts of the Apostjes, and 
study the life of Christ and his disciples, you 
will see the east wind blowing in the Garden of 
Gethsemane, and around that fire in the high 
priest's courtyard where Peter tries to warm 
his cold hands in the hour of his cowardice; 



*4 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



and again in Pilate's hall, where Christ is 
tried; and yonder on Golgotha's rugged sum- 
mit, where he hangs upon the cross. What 
awful days of alternating east and north winds 
those were for the disciples — days of fear and 
terror, when all their hopes seemed to be beaten 
down to the ground! Then came Easter morn- 
ing with its west wind of hope. Then followed 
forty days of occasional meetings and confer- 
ences with their risen Lord. Hopes they had 
never known before swelled large within them, 
as the buds swell on the trees in the spring- 
time. And then came the day of the ascension. 
Jesus takes them out to Bethany, and lifting 
his hands above their heads, prays God's bless- 
ing upon them and ascends out of their sight. 
While they stand with breaking hearts and 
tear-wet eyes, gazing after their departed 
Lord, angels stand by them with words of 
promise concerning the future. 

Then we see that band of perhaps a hundred 
and twenty men and women, who had given up 
their avocations and surrendered their whole 
lives to follow after Christ, going away and 
renting a quiet upper room where they may 
pray together and seek the blessing and wis- 



THE SOUTH WIND 



65 



dom and power of God to carry out the words 
of Christ among men. There they tarried day 
after day until, without previous notice or an- 
nouncement, as they prayed the south wind 
began to blow upon them, Luke writing the 
story of it says, "And suddenly there came 
from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a 
mighty wind, and it filled all the house where 
they were sitting. . . . And they were all 
filled with the Holy Spirit." 

You know the story of that day— how they 
went forth, those timid, fearful people, with 
their hearts glowing under the heat of God's 
south wind; how Peter began to preach and 
that little company of hot, burning souls scat- 
tered themselves through the crowd that gath- 
ered, each bearing testimony of what he or she 
knew about the love of God in Jesus Christ, 
and three thousand friends were won to Christ 
in that single day. There you have the creden- 
tials of God's south wind. Those rough, burry- 
speeched men who knew nothing above the 
common fisher-talk; and those women like 
Mary Magdalene and that other woman of 
Sychar, whose repute had been evil; and 
grafter folks like Zacchasus, and street-beggar- 



66 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



people like blind Bartimseus, under the warmth 
of the south wind became the most charming 
and lovable people on the earth. It was the 
cultivation of the Spirit of God. 

And what wonderful things the Spirit of 
God can do in a human soul ! It can make the 
most common life glorious beyond all our 
dreams of angelic loveliness, if the graces of 
the soul have but free career to grow under 
this breath of God. If our religious life has 
lost its zest of enthusiasm, the fire of its devo- 
tion, the tenderness of its loving sympathy, 
then let us know that the cure for it all is to 
open our hearts to the breath of the Spirit of 
God that is able to rouse and quicken us into 
newness of life. That is a wonderful vision 
which God revealed to Ezekiel, where he 
showed him the valley full of human bones; 
like a place in which a fierce battle had been 
fought and multitudes slain, and, according to 
ancient custom, the dead left unburied till the 
flesh was all consumed and the bones dried, 
divided, and scattered about. When he had 
gone round and round, and after careful sur- 
vey of the bones found them to be very many 
and very dry, the marrow from within as well 



THE SOUTH WIND 



as the flesh from without being utterly wasted, 
God inquired of him, "Can these dry bones 
live?" To which he answered, with humility 
and faith, "O Lord God, thou knowest." No 
created power could restore them to life; but 
if God should please to put forth his power, 
they might be raised from the dead and live. 
The Lord then said to him, "Prophesy over 
these bones." He commanded Ezekiel to pre- 
dict their resurrection, to call upon them to 
hear his word and to speak over them the 
promises concerning their being united and 
restored to life. Under the divine direction 
the prophet spoke, and at God's command the 
wind blew upon them and they were restored 
to life. Sinews and flesh came upon those dry 
bones and they stood about him with warm 
hearts sending the life-blood through their 
veins, and eyes flashing with the fire of hope 
and courage — an enthusiastic army. 

This old vision is full of illustrative truth. 
The Church of Jesus Christ often lacks power 
because the religion of many of its members 
degenerates into a ghastly form or creed, with 
no flesh on the bones, no sinews of influence or 
power, no unity of purpose, no generous, lov- 



68 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ing cooperation to do the will of God, no spirit- 
ual life and energy. Such a church may have 
a name to live, but in deed and in truth it is 
always dead. Oh, for the breath of the south 
wind of God upon his people everywhere, that 
those who name the name of Christ may be 
quickened into that devotion and spiritual 
charm that shall make them an efficient army 
of the Most High to win the world to Christ. 

But when we speak of the Church as a whole, 
we must not forget that it is made up of men 
and women such as we, and we give to it the 
tone and spirit which are to be its manifested 
life. If the quickening Spirit of God is to 
transform the Church, it must transform us. 
No one of us can ever come to the full stature 
of the whole personality which God sees is pos- 
sible for us unless we allow the divine fire to 
burn with a free draft in our hearts. Great 
Christian experience, supreme surrender to 
God, so that devotion to Christ and his cause 
burns at white heat, have always been prelimi- 
nary to the noblest work that men have done 
for others. 

Perhaps during his visit to America you saw 
Hugh Price Hughes, that flaming evangel of 



THE SOUTH WIND 



69 



Methodist missions in London, who set Eng- 
land on fire with the evangelistic spirit and left 
all Christianity on earth poorer when God took 
him home. His biographer tells us that there 
came into the life of Hughes a time like Pente- 
cost in spiritual baptism and power and that 
that glorious Christian experience was "the 
prelude of a singular bursting forth of his 
mental powers. The opening of the doors of 
the spirit was also that of the mind." 

I was reading recently the story of that 
gifted missionary, Pilkington, of Uganda. It 
seems that, after his first experience among the 
heathen in Africa, he lost heart, and, seeing 
the futility of his preaching and the poor re- 
sults of the Christian work in Uganda, he came 
to the conclusion that he would give up his 
work and return home. But at the crisis of 
his depression some unusual circumstances led 
him to a renewal of his covenant with God and 
he was brought so close to the divine heart that 
the south wind of God's Spirit blew warm 
upon his soul. From that time forth his life 
was transformed. His work became effectual, 
and the fruitful years began which ranked him 
among the greatest of modern missionaries. 



TO 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



It may be that we have undertaken to find 
the joy and power of the Christian life at the 
beginning of the path. We have wanted the 
south wind first in our lives. We would like 
to have the beauty and charm of the spiritual 
life without having suffered the cold blasts of 
winter or the blustering winds of the spring- 
time, but always the path to spiritual triumph 
must be by way of the cross. It must be God's 
way. For every one of us there can be only 
one true way into the most useful life here and 
the most joyous life hereafter, and that must 
be by surrendering our lives completely to 
the guidance and discipline of our heavenly 
Father. 

"I ask'd the Lord that I might grow 
In faith, and love, and every grace; 
Might more of his salvation know, 
And seek more earnestly his face. 

"I hoped that in some favored hour 
At once he'd answer my request, 
And, by his love's constraining power, 
Subdue my sins and give me rest. 

"Instead of that, he made me feel 

The hidden evils of my heart, 
And let the angry powers of hell 
Assault my soul in every part. 



THE SOUTH WIND 



"'Lord, why is thisf I trembling cried, 
'Wilt thou pursue a worm to death?' 
"Tis in this way,' the Lord replied, 
'I answer prayer for grace and faith. 

"'These inward trials I employ 

From self and sin to set thee free: 
To break thy scheme of earthly joy 
That thou mayst seek thy all in me. 7 " 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 



"Then Jehovah answered Job out of the whirlwind." — 
Job 38 : 1. 

THE whirlwind is used in the Bible as a 
description of an event or as an illustra- 
tive figure twenty-six times. It sets forth three 
distinct ideas, the first of which is illustrated 
in our text. It is the climax of the story of 
Job. For a long time Job had lived a quiet 
life of great prosperity and peace. We see 
toward the close of each summer what hap- 
pens in nature after a long continuance of 
sunshine and calm. The air grows stagnant 
and quivers with heat and is sluggish with 
humidity. The whole earth groans in pain and 
unrest in such an atmosphere. Then comes the 
whirling storm with its forked lightning and 
its roaring thunder and its downpour of rain, 
and the air is purified and cleansed. So in the 
life of Job — the prosperous man settles down 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 73 

upon himself in complacency and goes his self- 
ish way. A good man, it may be, but good for 
little in his sluggishness. Then there comes the 
whirlwind with its storm and tempest which 
makes him uncomfortable, and breaks his rest, 
and shocks him into a new attitude toward life. 
The storm purifies the atmosphere of his soul, 
rouses him from his selfishness, braces up his 
energies, and makes him a blessing to others 
and a grander, truer man in his own nature. 

I. Some people can never understand God's 
treatment of Job because their idea of God and 
of goodness is that the one is a goody-goody 
sort of personality and the other a sort of jelly- 
fish characteristic. It is strange how people 
build up an idea of the Divine Being as a per- 
sonality without common sense and without 
intelligent vigor. The God of the universe, the 
God of the Bible, is a God who delights in 
surprizes, who rejoices in doing things in in- 
teresting and unique ways. That is why nature 
and all life is so interesting — we do not know 
exactly what is going to happen. We know 
that certain great laws run through every- 
thing, but no man can prophesy what interest- 
ing phases are going to come up in God's deal- 



74 



THE WINDS OF OOD 



ings with him or with his neighbor. And if 
you will permit me to say it reverently, that 
is what makes God so interesting. Gerald 
Stanley Lee says, with a good deal of insight, 
that we do not naturally think of goodness as 
having much of lunge to it ; we think of it as 
tired-looking and discouraged and pulling 
back kindly and gently. Now I think God is 
not interested in that kind of goodness. You 
like the men and women with whom you have 
to do to be reliable and worthy to be depended 
upon, but at the same time they are infinitely 
more interesting to you if there is forever 
springing up in their conversation and in their 
conduct unexpected things which you had not 
foreseen. So God makes the world interesting 
by the infinite diversity of his nature and by 
the various ways in which he expresses it in his 
providence and dealings with us. 

God speaks to men and women in many 
ways. He does not always speak in the whirl- 
wind. He spoke to Adam and Eve in the gar- 
den of Eden in the quiet stillness of the night, 
when their sin had made them afraid. He 
spoke to Jacob in the dreams of midnight, 
when his soul was lonely in his exile. He spoke 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 



75 



to Samuel in the old temple in the days of his 
childish innocence. He spoke to Elijah in the 
whirlwind and the tempest, but his voice was 
not heard — it was not heard until by the still, 
small voice he communed with the rugged man 
in the quiet mountain cave. But Job needed a 
whirlwind to rouse him to the full power of 
his nature, and out of the whirlwind God was 
able to call him to his best self. 

God is speaking to every one of us. Some of 
us hear. Some go with deaf ears and know not 
that God is in the earth. Many are blinded 
by the material things of the world. They 
grope along, hunting for this world's bribes. 
They are like Balaam before his eyes were 
opened to see the angel of God with the sharp 
sword in his hand. When Balaam saw him he 
cried out in amazement, "I knew not thou 
stoodest in the way against me." So some- 
times God stands in the way to talk with us 
and to give us his message and we will not 
listen, we will not see. Let us pray that he 
may be able to attract our attention, tho it 
require a whirlwind to do so. 

For a long time Job could not find God in 
the experiences of his life. He cried aloud, 



76 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"O that I knew where I might find him!" He 
found him in the whirlwind of loss and dis- 
aster and pain and suffering; but he found 
him, and finding him found the cure for his 
woes and the answer to all his cries. How fool- 
ish we are when we imagine that mere things 
can make us happy and glad or that the ab- 
sence of them can make us miserable. 

At one of the Northfield Conferences a few 
years ago a missionary who had returned from 
the interior of Africa told a story that stirred 
the heart of every listener. He said he began 
his work there with companions as eager as him- 
self. One by one they all gave way before the 
terrible climate. Three of them he buried. The 
others he took to the coast and sent home. 
Then he turned back, to stand utterly alone in 
the midst of hundreds of thousands of men, 
women and children who had never heard the 
name of Christ. Again and again he tramped 
the distant plains with his tongue so swollen 
that he could not speak. Thirty times he was 
stricken by fever, with no one to care for 
him. Lions attacked him, natives ambushed 
him; he had lived upon everything — from ants 
to rhinoceroses. And here was his conclusion: 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 77 

"I know the great joy of walking with Jesus 
Christ in the midst of all this. I stand ready 
at this moment to go through it all again for 
the joy I have found in flashing the word 
'Savior' into the darkness of a great tribe. Is 
it God's will? That makes the wilderness a 
garden. That makes the desert glow with the 
very presence of God." 

Let us not miss the great secret of the story 
of Job and of this missionary — nothing can 
make life small and poor if the soul itself holds 
communion with heaven. No circumstance is 
powerful enough to defeat a soul which is 
aflame with the love of God and the love 
of man. 

There was an Englishman names James 
Smetham, an artist and a poet, whose work, 
however, never gave him popularity or suc- 
cess as the world counts them. Yet toward 
the end of his life he wrote: 

"In my own secret heart I look upon myself as one who 
has got on, and got to his goal, as one who has got something 
a thousand times better than a fortune, more real, more 
inward, less in the power of others, less variable, more 
immortal ; more eternal ; as one whose feet are on a rock, his 
goings established, with a new song in his mouth, and a 
new joy in his heart." 



T8 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



A man like that can realize the poet's song: 

"There is a sea — a quiet sea, 
Beyond the farthest line, 
Where all my ships that went astray, 
Where all my dreams of yesterday, 
And all the things that were to be — 
Are mine! 



"There is a land — a quiet land, 
Beyond the setting sun, 
Where every task in which I quailed, 
And all wherein my courage failed, 
Where all the good my spirit planned 
Is done! 



"There is a hope — a quiet hope, 
Within my heart instilled, 
That if, undaunted, on I sail, 
This guiding star shall never pale, 
But shine within my labor's scope, 
Fulfilled ! 

"And there's a tide — a quiet tide, 
Flowing toward a goal — 
That sweeps by every humble shore 
And at its fullest ebbs no more; 
And on that final swell shall ride — 
My soul !" 

II. The second idea around which clusters 
by far the largest number of these Biblical 
references to the whirlwind is the great fact 
that sin and folly always breed the whirlwind 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 79 

of punishment and disaster in God's universe. 
The prophet Hosea voices the theology of all 
of them when he exclaims of some people who 
have turned away from God and gone after 
foolish idols, and have been broken on the 
wheel of their own folly, "They have sown the 
wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." The 
Bible is full of illustrations of men who have 
done that. You see Samson, the young He- 
brew giant, with his marvelous gift of physical 
strength which made him such a great bene- 
diction to his people in dark and trying times, 
sowing the wind of his folly in the house of 
Delilah until at last he reaps the whirlwind as 
a poor slave, the plaything and sport of the 
Philistines as he works like an ox in the mill 
of his enemies. 

We have a picturesque and striking illus- 
tration of the intervention of God in the de- 
struction of a man who fights against him in 
the case of Sisera. Sisera was the Napoleon 
of his day — a brilliant soldier with the most 
splendidly equipped army of his time, and he 
came against Israel with war chariots and won- 
derful artillery. Now Barak, the natural 
leader of God's people, was a coward who 



80 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



dared not go out to fight against him. Then 
rose Deborah, the prophetess of the Lord, one 
of the great women of all the centuries. She 
was a personality, a great soul with such faith 
in God that she dared whatever he called on 
her to do. And she rose up and sought to 
shame Barak into action. The whining fel- 
low said, "I'll go if you'll go with me." And 
she said, "You'll get no honor for such con- 
duct. God will sell Sisera into the hand of a 
woman, and you will lose your chance for 
honor." But what does a coward care for that? 
And so Deborah led the army to victory, and it 
was she who sings of that intervention of God 
in the great whirlwind of electric storm that 
turned Sisera's war horses into panic, and 
washed away his artillery, and sent him de- 
feated, flying to his death. Brave, glorious 
Deborah! Singing about it she says, "They 
fought from heaven; the stars in their courses 
fought against Sisera." So the stars in their 
courses always fight against sin and make the 
ultimate victory impossible to the sinner. 

III. The third distinct idea where the whirl- 
wind is used as an illustration is in the story 
which is told us of the translation of Elijah, 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 81 

in the Second Book of Kings. The historian 
says of it that the day came when the Lord 
would take up Elijah into heaven by a whirl- 
wind, and that there appeared a chariot of fire 
and horses of fire, and they drove in between 
Elijah and Elisha as they walked along the 
road, parting them from each other; 4 'and 
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven." 
Here the whirlwind is used to illustrate God's 
surprizing intervention to bless, doing honor to 
his faithful servant in a most unexpected 
manner. 

Three ascensions to the skies are recorded. 
The first was that of Enoch, a man who in a 
dark age walked with God, and "he was not, 
for God took him." But before his transla- 
tion, "he had this testimony, that he pleased 
God." We have no other description of the 
translation of Enoch, and we do not know 
whether it was visible to the world or not. 

The ascension of Jesus after his resurrec- 
tion is naturally suggested to us by this part of 
our theme. We are told that our Savior, after 
appearing many times to his disciples and to 
others during the forty days following his 
resurrection, finally led them out as far as 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Bethany, and that there, after giving them his 
blessing, he was parted from them. There 
were no chariots of angels, no flaming horse- 
men; but gradually the Savior began to as- 
cend, and as they watched him he was lost to 
their view in the clouds, and as their hearts 
grew tender and the tears filled their eyes, two 
angels stood by them and comforted them with 
these words: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand 
ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, 
which is taken up from you into heaven, shall 
so come in like manner as ye have seen him go 
into heaven." 

Between the two, Enoch and Jesus, we have 
this scene of the ascension of Elijah. 

There is an interesting contrast between the 
translation of Enoch and Elijah and the ascen- 
sion of Jesus. Of Enoch it is said that "God 
took him" ; of Elijah, that God sent his chariot 
and horsemen and angelic guard to carry him 
up to heaven. But how different the ascension 
of Christ. Jesus was simply going home from 
whence he came. He needed no whirlwind nor 
chariot of fire to carry him back to his throne 
in heaven. Calmly, slowly, as if borne upward 
by a natural gravitation toward the skies, he 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 



83 



went thither, his hands outreached in blessing. 
His angelic guard did not need to surround 
him, clad in fiery armor. He needed that no 
more than did the one with a face like light- 
ning who rolled back the stone from the sepul- 
chre and before whose dazzling countenance 
the Roman soldiers fell like dead men. But 
clad in white apparel, the emblem of purity and 
peace, these angelic servants of Jesus remained 
behind by the weeping disciples to comfort 
them with hope. 

There is a message in Elijah's whirlwind 
for every one of us. We are all walking toward 
eternity. Every step we take brings the end 
nearer. None of us knows how long our jour- 
ney will be here, but we do know that every 
day's journey and every step we take on that 
journey brings the end closer. Some of us 
have traveled a long way already, and know 
that we have not much farther to go, and yet 
some who have gone but a short distance may 
be still closer to the end than we. We are 
going right on like Elijah and Elisha, walking 
and talking, when suddenly, it may be without 
an hour's time to prepare for the change, God 
will call for us, and we must go to meet our 



84 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Lord. Are we ready for it? If as you go 
home to-day, death should coirie to you out of 
the side street, as you turn the corner, and you 
should meet there "the pale horse and his rider" 
to summon you from earth to stand before 
God, are you ready? If not, if your heart 
shrinks back with fear at such a thought, then 
I urge upon you the wisdom of making ready 
now, and that you do not wait another hour 
before, through obedience to God and active 
faith in Jesus Christ your Savior, you become 
reconciled to God, so that you will be ready, 
as Elijah was, for such a call. 

If we have Christ as our Savior, our friend, 
our pilot, we need never be afraid of any call, 
however suddenly it may come upon us. The 
poet asks : 

"Who is the Pilot, into whose sure hand 

Waiting the summons as the day grows dark, 
Upon the border of this earthly strand, 
We may commit our barque? 

"Can Reason rule the deck, and firmly steer 

Through depths where swirling maelstroms rave and 
And madly threaten to o'erwbelin us, ere [roar, 
We reach the thither shore? 



THE WHIRLWINDS OF LIFE 



"Has calm Philosophy, whose lore unrolls 
The axioms of the ages, ever found 
A perfect chart to map what rocks and shoals 
Beset the outward bound? 

"Can Science guide, that with exploring glass 

Sweeps the horizon of the restless tide, 
And questions, 'mid the mists that so harass, 
' Is there a farther side?' 

"Dare old Tradition set its untrimmed light 
Upon the prow, and hope to show the way 
Through gulfing troughs that blinder make the night, 
Out into perfect day? 

"Nay, none of these are strong to mount the deck, 

And, with authority assured and free, 
Guide onward, fearless of the loss and wreck 
That crowd this soundless sea. 

"0 ye who watch the ebbing tide — what saith 
The wisdom that through ages hath sufficed 
For questioning souls? — The) only chart is faith; 
The only Pilot, Christ." 



THE NEED OF A RED-BLOODED 
CHRISTIANITY 

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a 
living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead."— 1 Peter 1:3. 

PETER has caught here preeminently the 
secret of the Christian life. Phillips 
Brooks once said to his people: "I exhort you 
to pray for fulness of life — full red blood in 
the body, full and honest truth in the mind, 
fulness of consecrated love to the dying Savior 
in the heart." 

I. Now Peter assures us that the beginning 
of this red-blooded Christianity is in God as 
its source. He who is the source of all vitality 
is the only source great enough, inexhaustible 
enough, to be the Father of a vital Christian 
life that can triumph over all difficulties, bear 
up under* all burdens, keep its faith against 
all disappointments, and face the problems of 

86 



RED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 87 

the present and the future with growing 
courage. 

The soul of a man harks back to God in all 
the great emergencies of life. Some years ago 
in one of our Southern States a little child 
wandered away from its home and was lost in 
a great swamp. When the news was heralded 
through the neighborhood, the people came 
from far and near, until two or three hundred 
were searching for the little wanderer. The 
swamp was full of stagnant pools and poison- 
ous serpents, and every friendly heart in all 
the company was full of tenderest anxiety for 
the lost child. When the darkness of night 
fell, the search was kept up with lanterns and 
torches of pitchwood, and at last in a regular, 
systematic manner they covered the entire 
swamp at short distances apart. Just before 
daybreak one of the parties came to the foot of 
a great tree beside which lay the child, half- 
starved, half -frozen, scared almost to death, 
and so feeble that it could scarcely cry. When 
it saw the company of searchers, it was fright- 
ened at first, and looked up in the face of the 
strangers and said : "I want my father." And 
that is the cry of a frightened world in all the 



88 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



great emergencies of life. The heart of man 
cries out to God. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, men everywhere are searching after 
God as a source of the real life which we crave. 

Peter declares that that full life is begotten 
within us by our heavenly Father through the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ. These words re- 
mind us of Paul's expression of the supreme 
longing of his soul — that he might come to 
know Christ so well that he should know "the 
power of his resurrection." Robert Speer, in 
one of his Northfleld addresses, declared that 
such a knowledge transfuses new life into the 
veins of the soul. The Christian life is not a 
matter of saying: "I have been a liar; I will 
not lie any more": "I have stolen; I will not 
steal any more": or, "I have committed sin; I 
will not sin any more." Rather, it is opening 
up all the doors of the personality to the in- 
coming of the risen Christ, with power to do 
in the life what our wills can never do, what the 
influence of friends by the power of associa- 
tion can never accomplish, and what can be ac- 
complished only as the supernatural life of 
God comes pouring through the lives of men. 
And this is what Paul means, for as we look 



BED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 89 



through his letters we find that Dr. Jowett 
sees truly when he finds Paul seeing all things 
set to work to make him unconquerable when 
this new hope of the risen Christ had once pos- 
sest him. Everything had a new meaning 
after that. Love exprest more than a rela- 
tionship. It was an energy productive of 
abundant labors. Faith was more than an 
attitude of the mind. It was an energy that set 
a man's whole life into action. Hope was more 
than a cheerful posing of the heart. It was, as 
Peter saw it, a living, vital, pulsing reality, 
sustaining a most enduring patience. And if 
you look through Paul's writings you will see 
how in his vision of the Christian life every- 
thing is at work to give the Christian success. 
The Holy Spirit worketh! Grace worketh! 
Faith worketh ! Hope worketh ! Prayer work- 
eth ! And those things which we naturally think 
of as enemies, even they, get a friendly look on 
their faces when once this living hope inspires 
the soul. And so we hear Paul shouting: 
"Tribulation worketh!" "This light affliction 
worketh!" "Godly sorrow worketh!" Until 
it seems to Paul, as it did to Elisha at Dothan, 



90 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



that "the mountain is full of horses and chari- 
ots of fire round about him." 

There is this comfort about the spiritual life 
— our triumph does not mean another's failure, 
our wealth does not mean another's poverty. 
The same forces that work together for our 
good are working together for the good of 
eveiy other man or woman who loves God. 

What we need to do, in order to bring 
heaven to earth, is to bring the spirit of the 
higher realm into dominance in the daily life 
we live, until the prayer Jesus taught is an- 
swered: "Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
heaven." 

Dr. George Macdonald, the poet-novelist 
who sought to live in that spirit, sings : 

"The Man who was Lord of fate, 

Born in an ox's stall, 
Was great, because he was much too great 
To care about greatness at all. 

"Ever and only he sought 

The will of his Father-good; 
Never of what was high he thought, 
But what his Father would. 

"You long to be great ; you try, 
You feel yourself smaller still; 
In the name of God let ambition die, 
Let him make you what he will." 



RED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 91 

II. With such a vivid picture of the normal 
Christian life — for Peter and Paul are not 
talking about angels, nor special saints, nor 
heroes, but about the natural, healthy, normal 
Christian life possible for all of us — with such 
a life within our reach, nothing could be more 
inconsistent than the anemic lives which some- 
times bear the Christian name. How pitiful 
it is to listen to some of the weak and apolo- 
gizing expressions concerning one's feeling 
toward God and Christ on the lips of many 
Christian men and women. Ask a man if he is 
a Christian, and with timid doubtfulness he 
says, "I hope so" — as tho he were afraid to 
let himself go in complete acceptance and joy- 
ous appreciation of the love of God in Jesus 
Christ. Some people seem to be afraid to ac- 
cept Christianity at its full and let their hearts 
revel in it. They are all the while holding a 
sort of post-mortem over themselves and their 
experiences lest they should believe something 
too good to be true. Henry Ward Beecher 
once said that a man might just as well, in that 
benign and blessed hour when the soul is cer- 
tain of love and of being loved, tear himself to 
pieces by an analysis of his experiences and 



92 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



say: "I do think I love her, but let me see, 
what is love? I ought to analyze that matter, 
and I ought not to allow myself to be mistaken 
in that thing. Is it a going forth of my will 
benevolently toward her, or is it simply the 
admiration of her form and comeliness? What 
is it?" Such a man is a fool on a gridiron. If 
a man does not know that he is in love, or 
whether he is or not, it is pretty sure evidence 
that he is not. So when I ask a man, "Is it 
your purpose to serve God?" and he hesitates 
and stammers and says: "Well, I hope it is," 
I am amazed and indignant. If a man were 
to sit down at my table and I offered him a 
delicious bunch of grapes, or a rarely flavored 
peach, and I said to him, "Do you relish that 
peach?" and he were to answer diffidently, 
"Well, I humbly hope that I do," I should be 
greatly tempted to give him a red pepper and 
find out whether he enjoyed that or not. My 
friend, if you are living an anemic life like that, 
there is something the matter with your re- 
ligion, and in its present condition it is worth- 
less to you, and must be worthless to the world. 
We know that it is displeasing to Christ. In 
the Book of Revelation he expresses himself 



RED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 93 



about some people who are living colorless lives 
like yours and says of them that they are 
neither cold nor hot, but are tasteless and luke- 
warm, and he declares that for that reason he 
will spit them out. God forbid that such a 
judgment shall be pronounced on our lives by 
our divine Master. 

III. This vital Christian hope which God 
begets in us by the resurrection of Christ is 
not narrow and personal — for ourselves alone 
— but is for humanity. A man can not truly be- 
lieve and realize that Jesus Christ is his Savior, 
not only pardoning his sins but lifting him out 
of sin — out of its bondage and its fear into a 
new life of courage and goodness — without be- 
lieving that Jesus Christ is also the Savior of 
other men, and that what has come to him is 
possible for others. And there is born with 
that faith a desire to help bring about the sal- 
vation of others who are in a condition of sin 
such as he has known. 

This living hope for humanity becomes 
broader and more splendid as we ourselves be- 
come more enlightened and illuminated. As 
we look back over the history of mankind we 
see that God has dealt with us as with children, 



94 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



and in the times of men's ignorance God 
winked at many things that afterward were 
recognized as deadly sins, because men knew 
better and their hope for humanity had grown 
larger. The Christianity of the past looks nar- 
row to us as we look back. Not very long ago 
large groups of Christians were sustaining 
slavery by quoting the Bible and praying 
God's blessing on themselves while thev held 
their fellow men in bondage. God seemed to 
them to answer their prayers for blessing until 
sufficient illumination came to make slavery 
impossible with the blessing of God upon the 
man who practised it. Only a little while ago 
intemperate people who both sold and drank 
liquor and gave it to others without question 
expected the blessing of God upon themselves 
and received it, and God used them until the 
light became too bright and men knew too 
much, and the hope for humanity became too 
broad a thing to make it longer possible for a 
man not to understand his duty toward his 
neighbor in this regard. And it is no longer 
possible for the blessing of God to be upon a 
church, in this country at least, and for God 
to use it for the salvation of men, if it is not 



RED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 



95 



true on the question of strong drink. Only a 
little while ago there was but a little group 
here and there among Christian people who 
took any interest in foreign missions, and the 
burden of the great heathen world was scarcely 
felt by the churches; but to-day "the living 
hope," like yeast in the midst of the meal of 
Christendom, has so permeated the whole that 
no church is being used of God in any blessed 
way in the salvation of men if it is not helping 
to bear the gospel to the benighted tribes of 
the world. 

We are coming to the time, perhaps we are 
already there, when every Christian Church in 
America shall lose its vital power, its con- 
sciousness of the presence of God, and its effi- 
ciency in winning men to Christ, if it fails to 
labor for economic justice to the great mass of 
working men and women. Things that seemed 
right a hundred years ago, or fifty years ago, 
or even twenty-five years ago, we are coming 
to recognize now as wrong. We are coming to 
know to-day that large classes of our fellow 
men have not had their fair chance, and the 
world of toilers is demanding something defi- 
nite — a mere vague, undefined sympathy will 



96 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



no longer be accepted. The day has come for 
a wider hope for humanity. Justice must be 
done, and it must begin at the house of God. 
Christian men and women must dare to be- 
lieve all the promises of God for themselves, 
and have as large and as splendid a hope for 
the poorest man and woman in the community 
as they have for their own souls. The pulpit 
and the Christian Church as a whole must feel 
more keenly the pulsations of this living hope 
in Jesus Christ for all men. 

The Rev. J. E. Rattenbury, one of the 
younger and one of the most brilliant of Wes- 
leyan preachers, on whom the mantle of Hugh 
Price Hughes seems to have fallen, recently 
referred to Holman Hunt's great picture, 
"The Light of the World," and said he would 
like to see a companion picture painted by 
some great artist. It should show a noble 
church with the front door partly open, so that 
any one could see the gorgeousness and the 
glory of the place, enriched by all that art and 
civilization could do. Then he would like to see 
the people in the church kneeling and praying 
with their faces toward the altar. Outside, he 
would have placed three pathetic figures — the 



RED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 97 



fallen woman in all her wretchedness and mis- 
ery; the beggar in his dirt and filth; and the 
slum child. Above this picture he would put 
the same text as there is above Holman Hunt's, 
"Behold I stand at the door and knock," but at 
the bottom. "Inasmuch as ye have done it 
unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
have done it unto me." "For that," says Mr. 
Rattenbury, "is the way that Jesus Christ 
knocks at the Church's door to-day." 

One Sunday night Dr. Len Broughton 
was preaching to a large congregation on 
"Heaven" and was enjoying it hugely, and all 
the people seemed to be happy, when suddenly 
his eyes lighted on four members of the city 
council sitting side by side in the congregation, 
listening to his talk about heaven. The mo- 
ment he saw those men he forgot all about 
heaven. He remembered at once that a few 
days prior to that there was before that very 
body of which they were members a proposi- 
tion for better sewerage in a certain tenement 
section of the city where there was raging at 
that time an epidemic of typhoid fever that 
was killing the poor people like flies. And 
Broughton himself had appeared with a com- 



98 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



mittee before that city council and made a plea 
for those dying people and urged proper sani- 
tation to stop the dreadful rage of fever that 
took them away every year by the score. These 
men had turned it down and had appropriated 
the money asked for this purpose to beautify 
a section of the city where the rich lived. 
Broughton said it was impossible to talk about 
heaven in the face of a situation like that, and 
he changed the course of his sermon and 
poured out his heart in behalf of a little bit of 
heaven in the city where they lived. When he 
was through preaching, a pious Christian 
woman with diamonds in her ears and on her 
fingers, took him by the hand and said: "I am 
awfully sorry that you got off of your subject. 
If I had known you were going to talk like 
that, I would have stayed at home." Brough- 
ton said, "Why?" "Oh, you are so much more 
powerful when you preach the gospel, the dear 
gospel." He answered, "Don't you think I 
was preaching the gospel?" "No, I don't. 
You have no right to talk like that when you 
preach the gospel from the pulpit." And 
Broughton turned to her and said: "Sister, 
when it comes to a pass that the thing I have 



RED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 



99 



been talking about is not the gospel, and I am 
sure of it, I am going to tear my Bible up, and 
resign rny commission as a preacher, and turn 
my back upon the whole business, and give my 
time to something that will work." And then 
she turned to him and said, "But it looks so 
much like a fight." "Well," said he, "don't 
you think we ought to be up and at it, as a 
fight? Did not our Lord say, 'I came not to 
bring peace on earth, but a sword?' And 
what have we a sword for? Just to dangle by 
our sides? We are not on dress parade; we 
are in service to fight." 

And I say to you that in my judgment great 
evangelistic power in winning souls to Christ 
will come, and can come, only to those churches 
that are living up to their light and illumination 
in doing their utmost properly to represent 
Jesus Christ in bringing about brotherly jus- 
tice and righteousness to the souls in the wages 
and social and hygienic conditions of men and 
women. The Socialist is right when he says 
that conditions make men. The Individualist 
is equally right when he insists that men make 
conditions. The work of the Christian Church 
is with the individual, but with the individual 



100 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



always as a unit in a social order. The work 
of the Church is with personal character, but 
with character defined in terms of social use- 
fulness. The Church must plead for better 
conditions in the world that we may have bet- 
ter men; and she must plead for better men 
that our conditions may be so improved that 
modern society may be redeemed and multi- 
tudes of ignorant, starved souls catch a glimpse 
of that living hope which is our own joyous 
heritage. 

IV. Our own growing vitality as Christians 
— the greatness of our own spiritual person- 
ality — is conditioned on activity in following 
the vision which God gives us in this great, 
living hope for the world. !N T o man ever yet 
came to his greatest by consciously cultivating 
himself or taking care of himself or centering 
his efforts on himself. The secret of the 
largest, happiest, noblest life is in forgetting 
oneself in the cherishing of interests that be- 
long to others. If a man can absorb himself 
in some cause that is great enough to draw out 
his whole soul in trying to add to the cheer and 
comfort and inspiration of those who have been 
weak and unfortunate, then he himself has 



BED-BLOODED CHRISTIANITY 



101 



found the path to the greatest life. The hero 
in a beautiful modern story says: 

"Our dear ones die; our affairs get tangled; our powers 
wane ; health and youth are spent ; the hearing dulls, the eye 
weakens ; it may be a losing game. But when one's interests 
are concentrated on something bigger than the immediate 
personal career, upon the social good, it is possible to be 
eternally, youthfully happy. No selfish idling can bring it, 
no dangling in museums and libraries, no aimless wander- 
ing by the mountains or the sea, no selfish pursuit of any 
kind whatever. It comes only through human service, and 
human sympathy, and human outreaching toward that 
which is eternal and divine." 

Here is the open secret of true greatness and 
supreme joy. Ethel Carnie has found the 
fountain of immortal youth for which the 
Spanish adventurer sought so long ago when 
she sings: 

"Wide open stands the door of my soul, 

And the world's men and women troop through; 
Some weeping, some laughing, some dumb with 
"Wearing roses, and fennel, and rue; [despair, 
And the beat of their feet makes a martial refrain — 
Come in, I am waiting for you. 

"Wide open stands the door of my soul, 

And the victor and vanquished tramp in; 

Come the makers of music immortal and sweet, 
Come the stirrers of conflict and din; 

And their voices sound loud as the roar of the sea — 
voices, I bid you come in. 



102 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"I can not shut the door of my soul ; 

Through the day and the night they pour through ! 

women and men, I can ne'er sit alone, 
For my fate is all mixed up with you ! 

1 must laugh to the end with the young and the gay, 
I must weep with the wearers of rue." 



AN ARTESIAN WELL OF JOY 



"Whom having" not seen, ye love ; on whom, though no w 
ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy 
unspeakable and full of glory." — 1 Peter 1 : 8. 

' ' TOY" is a much greater word than "hap- 
*J piness." It is a much richer word, and 
far more comprehensive. Take the words 
"happiness," "pleasure," "glad," "delighted," 
"enchanted," "charmed," and a dozen other 
words like them, put them in a test tube with 
the proper solvent of spiritual desire, and you 
will get as a solution this word "joy." Dr. 
Howard Bushnell says that happiness is that 
which happens or comes by outward befalling. 
You may sometimes buy it with money, or in- 
herit it from social position, or win it by exer- 
tion; but joy is not for sale in any market, and 
no man can bequeath it by will or achieve it by 
self-devotion. It must spring from what he 
is in his inner life and thought and purpose. 
Joy is so great a grace that it is sometimes 

103 



104 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



born of sorrow. Paul said that he joyed in 
tribulations. 

Joy is not only possible out of present ex- 
perience, but is often prospective concerning 
experiences that are to come. Once in a great 
zoological garden I saw a flock of young 
flamingoes. They looked like a band of rub- 
ber tubes stretching up out of as many downy 
covered water bottles on stilts. They were so 
ugly that they were interesting; the thought 
of beauty never could have suggested itself 
to any one who knew nothing about a flamingo. 
But after awhile, when they grew their wings 
and found themselves, and were gorgeously 
clothed in their marvelously colored feathers, 
if you had seen them flying in the sun you 
would have thought them a floating rainbow, 
fresh from the studio of God. So Christian 
joy comes sometimes from the fledglings of 
trial. So Peter suggests, in connection with 
our text, " Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though 
now for a little while, if need be, ye have 
been put to grief in manifold trials, that the 
proof of your faith, being more precious than 
gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire, 
may be found unto praise and glory and honor 



WELL OF JOY 



105 



at the revelation of Jesus Christ: whom not 
having seen ye love ; on whom, though now ye 
see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory." 

I. As we study this paragraph we see that in 
Peter's vision the Christian's joy does not de- 
pend upon outward things, but upon the deep 
spiritual relationship which we have with God 
through Jesus Christ. In some parts of the 
West and Southwest the settlers do not de- 
pend on local rainfall or snowfall for the 
watering of their crops, neither do they depend 
on the streams that flow on the surface for 
irrigation ; they bore deep down into the heart 
of the earth and tap rivers which have their 
source in the heart of the Rocky Mountains 
far away out of sight. From these hidden, in- 
exhaustible resources they draw the refreshing 
streams necessary to water the earth and make 
the desert a very garden of the Lord. It is 
thus that the Christian must find his joy. He 
must get it from hidden currents that flow 
from spiritual relationship with Jesus Christ. 
The surface streams can never be depended 
upon to give us abiding joy. 

I have seen a story of Charles Matthews, 



106 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



who was' the greatest English comedian of his 
day, who used to keep the great city of Lon- 
don in an atmosphere of healthy humor for 
months at a time. On one occasion he was 
worn out in body and brain, a victim of the sad 
despair which he had driven out of the lives of 
so many of his admirers. While in this condi- 
tion he called on an English specialist for med- 
ical treatment, exclaiming: "Doctor, what can 
you do for me? I am so sad. It almost seems 
to me, at times, that my heart will break." The 
famous physician made a most thorough ex- 
amination, and, not knowing the professional 
character of his patient, innocently remarked: 
"My advice to you is to go and hear Matthews, 
Charles Mat thews. "What you need, man, is 
a laugh, a hearty laugh. Hear M at thews. 
His humor will act as a tonic on your soul. 
What you need is laughter — not medicine. " 
"Ah," said the poor nerve-racked comedian, 
"I am Charles Matthews." We need to realize 
deeply that true joy comes from within, that 
the secret of joy, genuine joy, is to find God in 
Jesus Christ, for only there can we find a 
source of joy that can never be exhausted. 
I recently heard an interesting story of a 



WELL OF JOY 



107 



man who had his house wired for electricity but 
so far had used it only in connection with a 
battery installed for the purpose of ringing ■ 
various bells throughout the house. He did 
not know very much about electricity, and he 
fancied that if a battery could ring a bell it 
could make a light, and so he proceeded to run 
the wires from the battery up into his office. 
Then he adjusted a globe in the fashion of an 
electric light, turned on the current, and was 
greatly disappointed to find that he got no 
light. About that time a practical electrician 
came in, and seeing that he was in trouble 
about something, he said, "What is the mat- 
ter?" "I don't know. I have a battery here 
that has been ringing all the bells for a long 
time, and it has never failed me. So I thought 
that this battery that could ring bells so well 
could light my office. I tried and failed." The 
electrician looked at him and said, ' 'Don't you 
know that it takes much more power to make 
a light than it does to make a noise?" I think 
there are a good many people who need to 
learn that. One can get power enough from 
physical and worldly sources to make a good 
deal of outward show of religious form and 



108 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ceremony, but when it comes to that true joy 
which gives radiant gladness to the heart and 
buoyancy to the courage to face with confi- 
dence the struggles of every-day life, there 
must be a genuine connection between our 
hearts and the heart of God. There must be 
a vital battery constantly charged from the 
central spiritual battery of the universe. The 
man who has that connection will, like Paul, 
find joy even in the midst of pain and sorrow 
and tribulation, and remain undaunted in the 
face of certain persecution and death. Noth- 
ing can overcome our vital joy so long as there 
is uninterrupted relation between our hearts 
and the heart of God in Jesus Christ our 
Savior. 

II. One thing made very clear in the teach- 
ing of Jesus and the writers of the New Testa- 
ment is that if we live the Christ life we shall 
surely have the Christ joy. Christ said to those 
friends who loved him when he was here on 
earth that his joy should remain in them to 
make their joy full. One commentator says 
that Jesus Christ, having such resources of joy 
in his own nature, communicates to us his own 
character of love and his own resources of joy. 



WELL OF JOY 



109 



The word that signifies love in the original of 
the New Testament is radically one with that 
which signifies joy. According to the family 
registers of that language, they are twins of 
the same birth. Love is joy, and all true joy 
is love. 

To enter into the fulness of Christian joy 
we must really live the Christlike life. I was 
reading recently the brilliant discussion of a 
virile-minded man who says that true poetry 
is the sublimated and purified essence of life. 
He also declares that real music is emotion 
breaking into rhythm as a wave breaks into 
foam and sound. There has never been an age 
of great poetry, he says (and I think history 
will bear him out) , that was not first an age of 
great action, great thQught, great living. You 
can no more have lovely blossomings without 
hidden roots than you can have great poetry 
or music without a proportionate experience 
out of which they spring. You could not have 
love songs without the passion of a man and 
woman out of which they are born. Homer 
could never have sung without the inspiration 
of the heroes who inspired him. The psalms 
of David were born of the yearnings, the aspi- 



110 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



rations, the triumphant joy in God to which 
they give utterance. And as there could be 
no love songs without love, nor could they be 
sung but for the love they reawaken in hearts 
that listen, and no heroic poems without heroic 
lives, no psalms without the faith that soars 
above the conflict and the struggle until it 
breaks in triumph, so there can be no deep, 
abiding, up -springing stream of spiritual joy 
tli at will feed our souls with inspiration and 
confidence without the experience of devoted, 
Christlike living on our part. But given that, 
the Christian is largely independent of those 
surface streams of joy which are the worldly 
man's only resource. Some one sings of the 
man whose type is known to every one of us : 

"He kept his soul unspotted 

As he went upon his way, 
And he tried to do some service 

For God's people day by day; 
He had time to cheer the doubter 

Who complained that hope was dead; 
He had time to help the cripple 

When the way was rough ahead; 
He had time to guard the orphan, and 

One day, well satisfied 
With the talents God had given him, he 

Closed his eyes and died. 



WELL OF JOY 



111 



"He had time to see the beauty 

That the Lord spread all around; 
He had time to hear the music 

In the shells the children found; 
He had time to keep repeating 

As he bravely worked away: 
'It is splendid to be living 

In the splendid world to-day.' 
But the crowds — the crowds that hurry 

After golden prizes — said 
That he never had succeeded, 

When the clods lay o'er his head — 
He had dreamed — he was a failure, 

They compassionately sighed. 
For the man had little money 

In his pockets when he died." 

Who of us is so poor in rich treasures of 
memory that we have not known some of God's 
saints'who lived and died without much money 
in their pockets, who never seemed to score 
great success as the noisy world registers such 
things, but whose lives were so full of good 
cheer and quiet, loving helpfulness that the joy 
God gave them somehow watered and sweet- 
ened many a desert field along the way of life 
for all who came in touch with them. 

III. It is, I think, the supreme glory of our 
Christianity that this noble Christian joy is not 
for special cases and spiritual geniuses under 
unusual conditions only, but for common men 



112 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



in the commonplace experiences of the life of 
every day. A dear old Christian woman in 
talking to a young woman who had come to 
her for counsel, recalled the story of Christ's 
friends who had fished all night and caught 
nothing, and yet Jesus asked them to put down 
their net on the other side of the boat right 
where they were, and they took many fish. 
"Did you ever notice," said the old lady, smil- 
ing into the troubled face before her, "that the 
Lord told them to try again right in the same 
place where they had worked all night with- 
out success?" If we could only go off to some 
new place every time we get discouraged, try- 
ing again would be an easier thing. If we 
could be somebody else, or go somewhere else, 
or do something else, it might not be hard to 
have fresh faith and courage; but it is the 
same old net in the same old pond for most of 
us. The old temptations are to be overcome, 
the old faults reconquered, the old trials and 
discouragements before which we failed yes- 
terday to be faced again to-day. We must 
win success where we are, if we are to win at 
all. And the greatest triumph is possible right 
where we are, not through changed conditions 



WELL OF JOY 



113 



about us but through a change in us, by our 
becoming more perfectly related with Jesus 
Christ. If only we can manage to surrender 
our whole selves to the hands of Jesus, any- 
thing good enough to be true is possible, right 
where we are in our lives. 

One night three men, overtaken by a storm 
in the Adirondacks, sought admission to a lit- 
tle log hut which they came upon in the woods. 
There lived in this hut a hermit, a man who 
had been disappointed in politics and love and 
had become embittered with the world ; he had 
withdrawn from human associations and fel- 
lowship, and the three men who entered his 
hut received scant welcome. When the eve- 
ning meal was over, and they sat before the 
fire, one of the strangers noticed a violin on 
the shelf, which he wanted to play. The her- 
mit at first rudely declined to give him this 
privilege, but at last, being over-persuaded, 
placed it in his hands, and the stranger drew 
his bow across the strings and played some old 
familiar tunes, such as "Home, Sweet Home" 
and "Nearer, My God, to Thee" and "Annie 
Laurie." At the conclusion the hermit was 
sobbing like a child. He rose and took the old 



114 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



violin solemnly in his hands, replacing it on the 
shelf, and said, "After this, I shall never play- 
it again, for I am not worthy." The violin 
was old, it was really out of tune, but the 
player of the violin was Ole Bull, the master 
musician of his day. The magic power was 
not in the instrument, but in the genius which 
wrought upon it. So you and I may have been 
warped and marred by many things, left to 
ourselves we may give out much of strife and 
discord; but if we can only yield ourselves to 
that great Master Musician of the human soul, 
who knew what was in man and knows 
us better than Ole Bull knew the violin, the 
strife and discord shall cease, and the great 
deeps of our souls shall be brought into such 
harmony with Christ and be kept so continu- 
ally under his influence and skill that the joy 
that shall throb there, and sing there, shall find 
its way into our daily conversation and life, so 
that others will be charmed by the evidences of 
Christian love and experience shown by our 
conduct. How much sweeter the circle that 
surrounds us will be if we can live with the 
sunshine of Christ's face shining into our com- 
mon days. If we will take the gifts that are 



WELL OF JOT 



115 



common to us every day as tho they were 
fresh gifts from God, and let a new song spring 
out of them in every new day's experience, it 
will not only gladden our own lives but inspire 
the little circle that is closest to us. Some hum- 
ble poet has a little creed which would, I think, 
be good for every one of us to-day to make 
our own: 

"Let me be a little kinder, 
Let me be a little blinder 
To the faults of those about me, 
Let me pray a little more; 
Let me be, when I am weary, 
Just a little bit more cheery, 
Let me serve a little better, 
Those that I am striving for. 

"Let me be a little braver, 
When temptation bids me waver, 
Let me strive a little harder 
To be all that I should be: 
Let me be a little meeker 
With the brother that is weaker, 
Let me think more of my neighbor 
And a little less of me." 

IV. It is not hard to test ourselves and make 
sure whether our chief joy is Christian or not. 
If it is really Christian joy, it will be in har- 
mony, be of the same sort, as, the joy of our 
Lord. That was a terrible thing which Kip- 



116 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ling said about Matthew Arnold when he heard 
of the poet's death: "He won't like God." If 
we do not like God, then our joy is not Chris- 
tian. But if we have entered into such fellow- 
ship with Jesus Christ that we love him with 
grateful appreciation, then we will rejoice in 
the same things that make him glad. 

Jesus found his meat and drink in doing the 
things that needed doing in order to relieve 
the burdens on poor, neglected and opprest 
human beings. At the well of Sychar, when a 
conversation with a sinful woman whom he had 
been able to awaken to spiritual things had fed 
him so that his hunger had vanished, he said, 
"My meat and my drink is to do the will of 
him that sent me." Is that the food on which 
you live? In the land of Gadara a poor out- 
cast who was so devil-ridden he could not live 
at home was the man in whom Jesus was most 
interested. It was as tho he should come 
to your town and passing by smug, self-com- 
placent souls should devote himself to giving 
courage to some poor sin-curst cripples. Do 
you get any food for your soul in that way? 

There was a flaming scandal in a town where 
Jesus was, and a woman accused of grievous 



WELL OF JOY 



117 



sin was brought before him on her way to be 
stoned to death. He so interested himself in 
the poor, hopeless creature that he shamed her 
accusers into flight and brought hope to her 
heart and sent her away to sin no more. Do 
you treat scandal in that way? Do you get 
food for your joy in deeds like that? 

Jesus made childhood the standard of human 
value, and declared it were better for a man 
to have a millstone hanged about his neck and 
that he be cast into the sea than that he should 
harm a child. Do you find joy in loving and 
protecting childhood like that? If Jesus were 
here now, and a procession of weak and hurt 
and dwarfed and broken and disgraced men 
and women and children, gathered from all 
our towns, could pass before him, I can im- 
agine him turning to us and saying, "Inas- 
much as ye are ministering to one of the least 
of these unfortunate ones, ye are ministering 
unto me." Are you finding the food of your 
soul in such ministry? 

God help us to be honest with our own 
souls! The Christian religion is no idle form 
or ceremony, no dry husk of an unused creed, 
however orthodox. No, the fruits of the Spirit 



118 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



come of a living tree fed by a life source 
through roots that strike deep into the very 
heart of God and feed humanity with the only 
food that can nourish the souls of men. Jesus 
brought the love of God into the lives of men. 
He did not say much about souls as such; he 
ministered to men and women and children. 
If they were lepers, he cleansed them ; if they 
were blind, he opened their eyes ; if they were 
deaf, he treated their ears; if they were op- 
pressors, he shamed and thundered them into 
fear. If they were bowed and shamed by 
sin, he loved them into repentance. 

Men, women, children, rich or poor, learned 
or ignorant, high or low, good or bad, were to 
him sons and daughters of God, his brothers, 
his sisters; to do them good was his supreme 
joy. Are Ave like Jesus Christ? Is he our 
kind of man? If he came to our town, would 
we flock after him to help or would we criti- 
cize him as a visionary and a fanatic? These 
things of which I have been speaking were his 
food, his joy, his glory. Are they our joy? 

Make another test: Jesus says that there 
is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, 
and in that beautiful story of the sheepfold in 



WELL OF JOT 



119 



Luke's gospel, in which he tells of his own 
work as the Good Shepherd seeking the lost 
until he finds it, he represents himself as saying 
to his friends, when he has found the lost sheep 
in the dark mountain canyon and brought it 
back on his shoulder rejoicing, 4 'Rejoice with 
me; for I have found my sheep that was lost." 
And so Jesus Christ is calling to his friends 
to-day concerning every man or woman or 
child who is won back to him from sin, and he 
is saying to you again and again and again, 
"Rejoice with me." Do you rejoice with Jesus 
over the salvation of the lost? 

"Oh, yes," some one says, "I am happy when 
any of my neighbors or their children become 
Christians." But we must go farther afield if 
we are truly to share the joy of Jesus Christ. 
If you will reread the words of our Lord and 
the visions he gave to Paul in his man of Mace- 
donia and to Peter on the roof of the friendly 
tanner's house by the seaside, you will be sure 
that Jesus is as happy over the great sunrise 
of hope that comes in the conversion of a 
Korean or a Chinaman or a Japanese or a 
Guinea negro or an Eskimo, as he is when your 
neighbor or your son or your daughter finds 



120 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the light of life. We are yet far from know- 
ing the heights and depths that belong to the 
joy of our Lord unless we have entered into 
the travail of his soul for the redemption of 
the whole world from the thraldom of sin and 
heartache — unless we have caught the rapture 
of his vision of the time when God shall wipe 
away all tears from human eyes. Remember, 
"The joy of the Lord is our strength." You 
can never know the fulness of Christian man- 
hood, the real glory of Christian womanhood, 
until you share with Christ the fulness of his 
love for mankind everywhere. 

I must not close this study of Christian joy 
without a word to any one who is without the 
comfort of our great Christian hope. What 
can I say to you to awaken your confidence 
and your faith in the blessed fact that you 
may find forgiveness and love and welcome in 
the arms of the Savior this very hour? 

A man who was fond of the chase lived in 
one of our Southern States where the woods 
abounded in wild deer. One morning, as 
he was walking across his field, he heard the 
sound of hounds in the distance, and as they 
approached, looking through the cracks of the 



WELL OF JOY 



121 



old-fashioned rail fence, he saw a little fawn, 
very weary, its tongue hanging out and its 
sides lathered with foam. The little thing had 
just strength enough to leap over the fence, and 
stood there for a moment, with its great liquid 
eyes gazing about in a frightened manner. 
When it saw a hound leap over the fence not 
far away, its first impulse seemed to be to run 
again, but instead of running away, it came 
and fell down in a heap at the feet of the man. 
He said afterward, "I stood there and fought 
the dogs for nearly a half hour. I just felt that 
all the dogs in that county could not capture 
the little fawn after its weakness had appealed 
to my strength." He took the scared fawn in 
his arms, carried it tenderly home, gave it to 
his children, and it became a household pet. 
My friend, if a man accustomed to hunting 
could have a heart like that for the fawn chased 
by the hounds, what shall we believe about the 
tenderness of Jesus Christ, who put aside the 
glory of heaven and came to earth to seek after 
you? Who gave himself on the cross as a ran- 
som for you, and who is seeking you now, call- 
ing in every tender way, and stretching out 
his arms toward you? It may be that some 



122 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of you are chased by the hounds of passion and 
habit and sin until they have almost reached 
you with their fangs of deadly danger. Per- 
haps some of you are already torn and 
wounded. But if you throw yourself at the 
feet of Jesus Christ, he will take you in his 
arms and carry you home rejoicing, the joy 
of his heart shall be contagious in your heart, 
and a love joy shall begin between you and 
your Savior that shall last forever. 



TIGHTENING THE BELT OF 
THE SOUL 

"Wherefore, girding" up the loins of your mind, be sober 
and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be 
brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." — 
1 Peter 1 : 13. 

THE spirit of congratulation runs through 
all these words of Peter. He would have 
the people to whom they are written feel how 
greatly they are honored in living at a time 
so favored. He recalls the fact that for hun- 
dreds and even thousands of years prophets 
and great-souled men had looked forward and 
hoped and prayed for the dawning of a day 
upon which they had entered. He would have 
them know that even the angels of heaven 
were curious and wondering and longing to 
understand the glory of the epoch to which 
they were born. He would have them feel the 
privilege of living in their day, and because 
they were living in an age so blessed, so full of 
romance and heroic possibilities, he calls upon 

123 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



them to gird up the loins of their mind and set 
themselves in all earnestness, and with hope 
that nothing can daunt, to do their best for 
God and humanity in the fellowship of Jesus 
Christ. 

If the people of Peter's day could feel the 
pressure of that argument, how much more 
powerful should it be with us to-day. There 
are always some people who are ready to de- 
spair of their age and their race. Every age 
has some men who prophesy that humanity is 
a burned-out crater, that we are living in a 
world that is played out, and they sigh to think 
they could not have lived in an age of romance 
when the times were more interesting. We 
have such people. I can remember in my boy- 
hood the cry that the age of romance had gone, 
and that civilization had perhaps reached its 
climax. And yet there has been no such fifty 
years since the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethle- 
hem as the last half century. Talk about the 
age of romance being dead! Think what you 
people who have passed the half -century mark 
have witnessed. You have seen the entire story 
of the electric light. You saw electric cars do 
away with the old cars hauled by horses and 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL 



125 



mules. You saw the birth and establishment 
of the telephone and of wireless telegraphy. 
You have seen the discovery and growth of the 
phonograph and the dictograph and the kineto- 
scope. You watched the inventions leading up 
to the automobile, the typewriter, the cream 
separator, and the linotype machine. You 
have witnessed the discovery of the X-ray and 
of radium, the overthrow of diphtheria and 
j^ellow fever, the vaccine for typhoid, and re- 
searches that have added more than ten years 
to the average life of mankind, all compassed 
in your time. All these things have contributed 
to the rapidity of still greater transformations 
in the world. When you were a child, Japan 
was a fairy island which nobody took seriously. 
You have seen its growth and transformation 
into a world nation. You have witnessed the 
great republic of France grow to stability and 
power. You have seen Brazil changed to a 
republic, Korea and Africa opened to the gos- 
pel, all China honeycombed with the dynamite 
of Christian civilization and an empire of thou- 
sands of years of antiquity transformed into a 
republic, with its president and congress ask- 
ing for the prayers of Christian nations for its 



126 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



stability and usefulness. You are now in the 
great epoch ushered in by the World War 
when men and women are lifting up their hands 
for democracy in every land under the sun. 
Time would fail me to simply recount the titles 
of the great changes in the political history of 
the world, looking toward higher civilization 
and nobler triumph for man, that have occurred 
within our own time. And so I come to you in 
the spirit of Peter's congratulation, written so 
long ago, and I congratulate you that we do 
not live in an age that is burned out nor belong 
to a race that has become anemic and power- 
less. No, this is the most romantic age the 
world ever saw. All the past contributes to 
make it, spite of all its faults, the most glori- 
ous epoch of man. For us prophets have 
spoken, psalmists have sung, warriors have 
struggled, and saints have lived and sacrificed, 
and we have entered into the fruits of their 
labors. We are living in an age that is thrilled 
through and through with the influence of 
Christian thought and Christian hope. The 
Apostle Paul declared that the gospel of Jesus 
Christ was the dynamite of God unto salva- 
tion, and there are more fuses burning to-day 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL M 

in the blasting quarries of the world than ever 
before. The time calls for men and women 
awake and alert and full of the hope and dar- 
ing of the gospel to further the purposes of 
God in Jesus Christ for the advance of human- 
ity. Wherefore, in Peter's words, let me ex- 
hort that we gird up the loins of our minds to 
do our best. 

I. The spirit of our text and our theme 
ought to stimulate us to tighten our belt, since 
we have only one opportunity to do something 
for the world, and time flies. Some of you 
remember the parable of "The Terrible Clock,' ' 
portrayed by Oliver Wendell Holmes: Each 
tick said, "Quick," and each hour stroke, 
"Gone." A great artist once said to his stu- 
dent: "Catch that sky while it lasts — yonder 
cathedral door, with its brazen wings, can be 
copied some other time." When Raphael died 
at thirty-seven years of age, with his marvelous 
picture of the Transfiguration only half fin- 
ished, they carried his painting in the funeral 
procession as a symbol of the incompleteness 
of life and the brevity of time. The wise man 
girds up his loins to seize the present in doing 
and daring and enjoying. 



198 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



"Be swift, dear heart, in loving, 
For time is brief, 
And thou may'st soon along life's high way- 
Keep step with grief. 

"Be swift, deart heart, in saying 

The kindly word; 
When ears are sealed, thy passionate pleading 
Will not be heard. 

"Be swift, dear heart, in doing 
The gracious deed, 
Lest soon they whom thou holdest dearest 
Be past the need. 

"Be swift, dear heart, in giving 
The rare sweet flower, 
Nor wait to heap with blooms the casket 
In some sad hour. 



"Dear heart, be swift in loving — 
Time speedeth on; 
And all thy chance of blessed service 
Will soon be gone." 



II. Because time flies and because of the 
great opportunities to do good in the world, I 
feel like urging every man and woman and 
every youth to tighten the belt of the soul and 
harness life to high purpose — to live for great 
things, and to put all the stream of energy into 
the flume that pours to the wheel of helpful- 
ness to make a nobler world, Men weigh more 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL 



129 



by their energy and earnestness than they do 
by their talents; yes, a hundredfold more. 
The earnest man or woman works miracles in 
the world, I have seen a story of the civil war 
in Spain. Don Basilio was a captain in the 
army of Isabella. His friend Ramon was with 
the Carlists. Don Basilio was captured and 
sentenced, with twenty others, to be shot. The 
execution began. Don Basilio was tenth in 
the line. Seven had fallen. Two more, and 
then Don Basilio. 

At that moment Ramon ran to him and 
seized him in his arms. "Not this one; not 
this one, General," he cried. 

"Why not this one? Is he a musician?" 
asked the General. The Carlists did not shoot 
the musicians, as they did not injure them dur- 
ing the fight, also because they needed music 
bands for their battalions. 

"A musician!" exclaimed Ramon; "Yes, 
yes, General, he is a musician; a grand musi- 
cian." 

"Upon what instrument does he play?" 
"The — the — ah, now I remember, the 
French horn." 

Don Basilio could not play on any instru- 



130 



THE WIXDS OF GOD 



ment; he did not understand a single note of 
music. The band to which he was allotted was 
to be organized in fourteen days. Death 
faced him and the friend who had saved him. 
Here is what Don Basilio said to his friend: 
"In fourteen days I will know music; in four- 
teen days I will play upon the French horn." 

The French horn is a very difficult instru- 
ment to learn. Don Basilio tells the story: 
"In fourteen days — ah, the power of the will! 
— in fourteen days, with their fourteen nights 
(I did not sleep for half a month) — yes, you 
have cause to be astonished — in fourteen days 
I learned to play upon the horn. What days 
they were. Ramon and I went to the fields 
and spent our days with a musician who came 
from a neighboring place to instruct me. I 
spoke nothing, I thought nothing, I ate noth- 
ing. My only thought was music — the French 
horn. I wanted to learn and I learned it. Had 
I been dumb, I should have learned to speak; 
if lame, to walk; if blind, to see — because it 
was my will to do it. Ah, the will ; that is the 
greatest power on earth. I had the will to do 
it ; therein lies the whole deed. I had the will, 
and I succeeded." 



TEE BELT OF THE SOUL 



131 



Let us too summon our wills to whip our- 
selves to high endeavor toward the noblest 
things that appeal to the souls of men. 

I was once driving through the outskirts of 
a great city when I noticed a number of what 
seemed like brick chimneys with iron caps over 
the top, standing at regular intervals on either 
side of the road. I noticed that some were 
much taller than others, but their tops seemed 
to be on one level. I could not tell what they 
were, for awhile, but I soon came along to 
where some lots were being graded up to the 
level of the street on which I was driving, and 
then I saw that one of these brick chimneys in 
a side street adjoining these lots was filled 
around to the top. Then I knew that all these 
brick chimneys were hydrants, and that they 
had been put in ahead, so that when that part 
of the city was graded up they would be al- 
ready in their places. They were predictions 
showing that the whole level of the town was 
to be lifted up after awhile. Our ideals are like 
those hydrants. If they are high and noble, 
and we are struggling toward them with faith- 
ful purpose, they are the prophecy of what we 
are to be, and mark the level to which our lives 



132 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



will some day rise. Jesus Christ shows his 
great faith in humanity by the hard things he 
demands of us. He will not be satisfied with 
us save when we are doing our best. He will 
not break the bruised reed, but he does not in- 
tend that we shall remain bruised reeds. He 
will not quench the smoking flax, but it is be- 
cause he sees in that poor smoke a prophecy of 
the great flame that shall burn and blaze when 
it has come to its power. I think our modern 
pulpit has lowered the appeal to men and 
women. I think the reason so many sermons 
are helpless in attracting men to Christ is that 
they preach too easy a life and do not demand, 
as Christ did, a transformation that means sac- 
rifice and service of the most heroic type. I 
think Dr. Jowett is right when he says that if 
we would call on men to serve, they would re- 
spond where now they resist our allurements. 
If we offered men swords instead of prizes, and 
battles instead of feasts, there is many a strong- 
hold of iniquity that would be torn down by the 
heroic enthusiasm we would arouse. There is 
no joy like the joy of holy battle; there is no 
song so sweet as the song that rises from the 
field of conquest. In this glorious day, when 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL 



133 



we are living on the roof of the world, Christ 
is calling us to battle. 

"The Son of God goes forth to war, 

A kingly crown to gain; 
His blood-red banner streams afar; 

Who follows in his train?" 

III. We should each tighten our belt and 
take a new start when we remember that how- 
ever discouraging our surroundings, or how- 
ever weak we may be in ourselves, we are God's 
men and women, and he has promised that 
nothing that we ought to do shall be impossible 
to us if we put ourselves in his hand to do the 
work for which we were made. Our weakness 
and inefficiency come usually from a lack of 
surrender to God to be tools in his hand to be 
used for what he sees is our effective service. 
Dr. Charles Jefferson has this striking parable : 
He says he heard a voice in his study one day. 
It said, "I can not shine, I can not do anything. 
I do not amount to anything. See how dull 
and stupid I am. You can not expect me to 
make a light." It was the carbon in the elec- 
tric light that was talking. It was quite dis- 
couraged. 



134 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Then the listener broke in: "Are you will- 
ing — willing to be used to make a light? Are 
you willing to be an instrument?" 

"Yes, I am," said the carbon. 

Then Dr. Jefferson pressed a button, and 
immediately the carbon shone and the light 
flooded all the room. 

Some of you are in the habit of saying: "I 
can not do this, I don't amount to anything. 
There is nothing in me. See how dull and 
stupid I am. I can not make a light." Stop 
saying that. The only question is, Are you 
willing to be used, to be a medium, to be an 
instrument? Are you willing to let God shine 
through you? Everything depends on that. 
If you have been a failure in the past, it has 
been because you have not had the faith and 
courage just to give yourself with all your 
latent force into the hand of God to be used in 
the path of duty. If you are ready to do that 
now, God is able to make your life shine and 
glow with usefulness such as you have never 
known and never hoped for. It may be some 
of you need above everything to hear just this 
message. There have been times when you 
have been greatly used of God, but you have 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL 



135 



dropt into a rut where you no longer hope 
to be useful. David Lloyd George tells the 
story of a ministerial friend of his who married 
a rich wife and gave up his work, doing only 
occasional duty in special circumstances. He 
was traveling one day by train and entered a 
carriage in which there were two Welsh women 
and an Englishman. The women were so def- 
erential to the minister that when the latter 
left the train the Englishman asked if he were 
the squire. "No, sir," was the answer, "he's 
not the squire. He's a — he's a retired Chris- 
tian, sir." Almost every church has some re- 
tired Christians in it, who live on memories of 
days when they were useful. If any one here 
has reached that stage, I want to exhort him 
to tighten his belt and take a new venture in 
the service of God. Age and experience and 
even weakness are often sources of miraculous 
power when they are completely consecrated 
to God's service. There are victories you can 
win now that you never could have won at any 
other stage in your life. The sunset of life 
has its glory as well as the sunrise and the 
noonday. Everything is beautiful in its time 
to the man or the woman who lets hope have 



136 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the right of way in the heart. Peter urges the 
friends to whom he writes to let hope have free 
swing and to set their hope perfectly on the 
grace that is to be brought to them at the reve- 
lation of Jesus Christ. 

It is no competition to which I am sending 
you, but a call to a still nobler personal char- 
acter and career. Maltbie Babcock says beau- 
tifully that it is not our business in life to get 
ahead of other people, but to get ahead of our- 
selves: to break our own record, to outstrip 
our yesterdays by to-days, to bear our trials 
more beautifully than we ever dreamed we 
could, to whip the tempter inside and out as we 
never whipt him before, to give as we never 
have given, to do our work with more force and 
a finer finish than ever — this is the true idea, 
to get ahead of ourselves. To beat some one 
else in a game, or to be beaten, may mean much 
or little. To crowd ourselves to a higher level 
always means a great deal. Whether we win 
or not, we are playing better than we ever did 
before, and that is the point, after all. God 
help us to tighten the belt of the soul so that 
up to the very last every one of us may play 
ever and ever a better game of life. 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL 137 



IV. In all these appeals which Peter makes 
for greater service and nobler living he has con- 
stantly in mind our relation to Jesus Christ. 
And I must not close without recalling to our 
minds the tenderest and most sacred appeal of 
all, that we should tighten the belt of our souls 
and nerve ourselves for heroic service when we 
remember our relation to Jesus Christ. We 
are not our own, we have been bought with a 
price, even the precious blood of Christ. 

Dr. Len Broughton was once holding meet- 
ings in one of our Southern cities when a man 
called at the hotel to see him, and when he came 
up to Broughton's room Broughton found him 
to be a farmer with great horny places in his 
hands, indicative of hard work. He was drest 
in rough farmer clothes. 

After a little conversation the man said, "I 
suppose you wonder why I am here." 

Broughton said, "Yes, sir, I really do." For 
Broughton had found that he was a good Chris- 
tian and he could not see where he could be of 
any special help to him. 

The farmer said, "I came just to give you 
a story. You are fond of stories in your ser- 
mons, and I thought I would give you a new 



138 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



one. I don't know whether I am going to be 
able to tell it to you or not, because it comes 
so close home to me." Then he pulled a letter 
out of his pocket, which he did not give to 
Broughton for some time. 

He said, "I have a boy — only one child. We 
worked awful hard, wife and I, on the farm, 
to educate him, for he was such a bright, prom- 
ising lad. We passed him through our home 
college with honors. It took everything we 
could make to do it. We often denied ourselves 
food that we needed. And finally, we sent him 
to a great university. And a little while ago 
we got a telegram from him to this effect: 
'Graduated with first honors.' And, sir, you 
can not imagine how proud we were of that. 
Everything we had was wrapt up in that 
boy. His mother had worked and I had 
worked; we had toiled together, and now we 
must send him a telegram — we had only just 
money enough to pay for it. Here is the tele- 
gram: 'Mother and father are proud of you 
to-day.' " 

The old farmer choked a little, and his eyes 
filled with tears as he went on: "Sir, when he 



A. 1 



THE BELT OF THE SOUL 



139 



got that telegram he sat down and wrote this 
letter, and I want you to read it." 

Dr. Broughton read it. Such a sweet letter 
it was, too. The gist of it was: "Father, your 
and mother's telegram nearly kills me. You 
talk about being proud of me that day, and I 
was not thinking about myself. I was think- 
ing about your and mother's horny hands that 
had made it possible for me to be here." 

The old farmer then said, "I want to keep 
that letter as long as I live." 

And Broughton said, "You would do well 
to keep it." 

Dr. Broughton says that when the old man 
went out his heart just broke in tenderness as 
he felt how that boy's attitude toward his 
father and mother exprest the attitude which 
he himself ought to feel toward Jesus Christ. 
God grant that we, too, may catch its message 
of grateful appreciation and love. He who 
gave himself for us, who redeemed us with his 
own blood, calls us to service in fellowship with 
himself. 

'''Under an Eastern sky, 
Amid a rabble's cry, 
A man went forth to die 
For me. 



140 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"Thorn-crowned his blessed head, 
Blood-stained his every tread; 
Cross-laden, on he sped, 
For me. 

"Pierced glow his hands and feet, 
Three hours o'er him beat 
Fierce rays of noontide heat, 
For me. 

"Thus wert thou made all mine; 
Lord, make me wholly thine ; 
Grant grace and strength divine 
To me. 

"In thought, and word, and deed, 
Thy will to do. lead 
My soul, e'en though it bleed, 
To thee." 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 



"Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, 
and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new- 
born babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without 
guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation ; if ye have 
tasted that the Lord is gracious." — 1 Peter 2 : 1-3. 

THIS theme depends as much upon the 
attitude of the audience as it does upon 
the speaker himself. The natural man does 
not like this sort of theme. It is too heart- 
searching, comes too close home. If profitable, 
it must stir the conscience too earnestly to be 
a comfortable discussion in which to indulge. 
If it is to be profitable to us, it will be so be- 
cause through honesty and humility there shall 
be aroused in us a sensitive consciousness con- 
cerning ourselves and an earnest desire to be 
developed along the line of the noblest and tru- 
est Christian manhood or womanhood. 

I begin this sermon knowing that the fate 
of it is in your hands rather than mine. And, 
indeed, that is always so to a larger extent than 

141 



142 THE WINDS OF GOD 



we usually realize. It has been a common 
figure used to admonish preachers to greater 
earnestness and zeal, to compare the preacher 
to a lawyer who is addressing a jury and plead- 
ing for a verdict. It is often said that the 
minister should exhibit the same earnestness 
in seeking to win a jury to give a verdict ac- 
cording to his wishes that a lawyer does with 
a jury in an important case in an earthly court. 
But, as has been said by others, there is a tre- 
mendous difference that destroys the parallel. 
The juryman in court has no personal inter- 
est in the verdict; if he had such an interest, 
he would be disqualified. But the minister 
summons his jury (and that is especially true 
in a theme like the one we are to study now) 
to pass judgment on itself, and lethargy and 
prejudice and old habits all conspire to resist 
the appeal he makes. A good many of the 
hearers do discover an application — an appli- 
cation to the man in the next pew; but a per- 
sonal application they stedfastly resist. Then, 
too, the lawyer in court is speaking to a jury 
that is bound to make up its mind on a case 
as proved or unproved, but the preacher has to 
deal with hearers who are often not conscious 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 143 



of an obligation to make up their minds at all. 
Therefore there is need of earnest sincerity. 
If I could be sure that every one who hears me 
felt himself under bond to welcome every bit 
of truth I bring, and apply it to his own life, 
at any cost of cherished prejudice, we should 
all be conscious of strange power in this dis- 
course. No honest man could fail to preach 
with tenfold power to an audience like that. 

I. Our text is first an exhortation to throw 
away some things that we may have others. 
And all life is full of such choices. Paul com- 
pares life to a race, and exhorts that we strip 
ourselves of every unnecessary weight and bur- 
den that we may do our best, that we choose 
the prize at the end of the race rather than the 
things we must throw away in order to get it. 
Peter uses the figure of growing manhood, 
and assures us that there are certain things an- 
tagonistic to the development of Christian 
character, and if we are to grow up into Christ- 
like personalities these things must be thrown 
away. Every life as it grows greater is the 
illustration of this principle. First the baby 
is pleased with the rattle and the rubber ring 
to chew, but when it gets a little older, it throws 



144 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



these away for building blocks and toys of an- 
other sort. After a little, if the child really 
grows in mind as well as body, it drops these 
for school books, and its tops and playthings 
are of a higher kind. As development goes on, 
these in turn are cast aside, outgrown; and 
every growing youth has realized Paul's say- 
ing, "When I became a man, I put away 
childish things." Every man and woman who 
has lived past middle age and has grown truly 
looks back over every epoch and can see all 
along the path things they have thrown away 
which for a while seemed necessary and im- 
portant. So it becomes true that you can judge 
a person by what he can do without and by 
what he has outgrown. 

Phillips Brooks declares that on these two 
ladders, these two scales, the order of human 
character mounts up — the power to do with- 
out and the power not to do without. As 
you grow better there are some things which 
are always relaxing their grasp upon you; 
there are other things which are always tak- 
ing tighter hold upon your life. You sweep 
up out of the grasp of money, praise, ease, dis- 
tinction. You sweep up into the necessity of 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 145 



truth, courage, virtue, love, and God. The 
gravitation of the earth grows weaker, the 
gravitation of the stars takes stronger and 
stronger hold upon you. And on the other 
hand, as you grow worse, as you go down, the 
terrible opposite of all this comes to pass: the 
highest necessities let you go, and the lowest 
necessities take tighter hold of you. Still, as 
you go down, you are judged by what you can 
do without, and what you can not do without. 
You come down at last where you can not do 
without a comfortable dinner and an easy bed, 
but you can do without performing an act of 
charity or without a thought of God. The 
poor sot finds his misery sealed with this double 
seal, that he can not miss his glass of liquor, 
and he can miss without a sigh every good com- 
pany and virtuous wish. Let us judge where 
we stand by the things we are willing to let 
go for the sake of God and humanity. 

II. Peter gives us some suggestions as to 
the kind of things that we must throw on the 
junk pile as useless and injurious if we are to 
grow into the kind of men and women that 
God demands we shall be. First, he declares 
as a general principle that we must throw away 



146 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



all wickedness, and then he helps us by suggest- 
ing certain things, certain phases of evil, by 
which we may test ourselves concerning our 
growth in grace and in a righteous life. The 
first of these that he suggests is "guile," a cer- 
tain lack of wholesome directness which in a 
Scotchman we would call "canny," in an Amer- 
ican we would call "sharp" — a kind of selfish- 
ness which roils the water of life and robs us 
of perfect sincerity and frankness of dealing. 
We know what it is in life better than we can 
define it. There is a story of an Arab who 
went to his neighbor and said, "Lend me your 
rope." 

"I can't," said the neighbor. 
"Why can't you?" 

"Because I want to use the rope myself. I 
want to tie up five cubic feet of water with it." 

"How on earth," sneered the would-be bor- 
rower, "can you tie up water with a rope?" 

"My friend," said the neighbor, "Allah is 
great, and he permits us to do strange things 
with a rope when we don't want to lend it." 

The least lack of frankness and genuineness 
robs us of the truest character and many of the 
joys which ought to be ours. Spurgeon tells 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 14T 



a story of a poor old woman who, when she 
saw her landlord coming to the front door, hid 
in the garden behind her cottage because she 
did not have the rent ready. The landlord was 
passing a few days later and seeing the old 
lady, said he had called a day or two earlier 
but had not found her in. Then the old lady 
confest. She had not been out; but she sup- 
posed he wanted the rent and she had no money 
for him. Then her landlord laughed good- 
naturedly: "Why, no, Margaret, I was not 
after the rent. I happened to have a sover- 
eign I thought you would like to have. So I 
stopt as I passed, to give it to you. Now, 
unfortunately, I haven't got it; I gave it to 
some one else." How often a little guile in us 
robs us of the gracious purpose God has for us. 
This guile, as Peter means it, is I think the 
peculiar sin of "good" people, respectable peo- 
ple, people who have been so hedged about that 
there are no outbreaking sins charged against 
them, who are likely to be self-complacent, and 
yet lack that perfect unselfish devotion to God 
and his service, that unquestioning loyalty to 
Christ, which would make them greatly useful. 



148 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



I think it would do all of us good to ask our- 
selves the heart-searching question: 

"Were the whole world good as you — not an atom better — 
Were it just as pure and true, 
Just as pure and true as you; 
Just as strong -in faith and works; 
Just as free from crafty quirks; 
All extortion, all deceit; 
Schemes its neighbor to defeat; 
Schemes its neighbors to defraud; 
Schemes some culprit to applaud — 
Would this world be better? 

"If this whole world followed you — followed to the letter — 
Would it be a nobler world, 
All deceit and falsehood hurled 
From it altogether; 
Malice, selfishness, and lust 
Banished from beneath the crust 
Covering human hearts from view — 
Tell me, if it followed you, 
Would the world be better?" 

One of the specifications which Peter uses 
as a suggestion of junk for the growing Chris- 
tian to get rid of is "hypocrisy." There are 
many unconscious hypocrisies which neverthe- 
less rob us of much of our power and useful- 
ness. People who become accustomed to see- 
ing the evil in other people and making it an 
excuse for their own failure to do their duty 



TEE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 149 

are consciously or unconsciously hypocrites. 
A bright clergyman was arguing with a friend 
on the desirability of attending church. At 
last he put the question squarely, "What is 
your personal reason for not attending?" The 
man smiled in a quiet way as he replied, "The 
fact is, one finds so many hypocrites there." 
Returning the smile, the clergyman said, "Do 
not let that keep you away — there is always 
room for one more." 

One of the greatest dangers of hypocrisy to 
Christian people is the danger of professing 
more than they have of the Christian spirit. 
Some of the saddest tragedies I have ever 
known among Christian men and women have 
come about in the career of people who at the 
outset were deeply sincere and devoted, had 
entered into a very rich and restful Christian 
experience, made profession of entire sanetifl- 
cation, after a time fell away from their com- 
plete and whole-hearted service to God, and - 
lost out of the heart and life the reality, while 
the outward profession of the lips still waved 
like a flag over an empty fortress from which 
the army has been withdrawn. Such tragedies 
are terrible, and we need to be careful concern- 



150 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ing the genuineness of our inner spiritual life. 
We should cherish nothing within that robs us 
of our perfect fellowship with Christ. A trav- 
eler in Borneo tells of finding there a great 
cave which was occupied in the daytime by the 
bats, and at night by the swallows. As he 
watched the mouth of the cave about sunset 
the first column of bats appeared, and wheeled 
away down the valley in a long coil, winding 
over the treetops in a wonderfully close and 
regular order. These were followed in less 
than a minute's time by another column, and 
in forty minutes, forty-seven distinct columns 
were counted, each about six hundred feet long 
by ten feet thick. It was estimated that over 
half a million bats flew out of the cave in less 
than three-quarters of an hour. As the last 
bats flew away the swallows appeared in enor- 
mous numbers and for a long time there was 
a ceaseless whirr of wings. Soon after dawn 
the next morning the bats returned, and liter- 
ally rained into the cave, while the swallows 
passed out in a counter current. Some people 
try to live a double life like that. To the outer 
world they try to make it appear that they are 
as innocent as swallows, while underneath the 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 



151 



bats hold revel. But, as in the case of "Dr. 
Jekyl and Mr. Hyde," the evil Mr. Hyde came 
at last into control, so the man who lets the 
bats of evil thoughts and impure imaginations 
hold revel in his soul will after a while be 
mastered and controlled by them to his final 
disaster. 

Another specification which Peter uses of 
proper stuff for the junk pile is "envyings." 
Envy is the more dangerous to us because in 
the beginning it is hard to see the real ugliness 
and deadly poison of its nature. I have seen a 
parable of a young cabbage that discovered 
some specks on the under side of one of its 
leaves. 

"You had better shake them off at once," 
said an elder tree close at hand. "I am older 
than you, and have seen many cabbages de- 
stroyed by specks like that." 

"Oh, nonsense," said the cabbage, "how can 
these wee things destroy anything? Besides, 
I rather like them — they are pretty to look 
upon and afford me diversion." 

The days passed, and after a time out of the 
eggs there crept some queer-looking creatures 
with voracious jaws and hairy necks. 



152 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"Ugh," exclaimed the cabbage. "I don't 
like the look of you. Get off of my leaves, will 
you?" 

The caterpillars took no notice, but at once 
fell to work to eat up the tender leaves. 

"Here," cried the cabbage, "I am not going 
to stand that. Don't you see that you are spoil- 
ing my beautiful leaves? Get off, you ugly 
creatures !" 

But the caterpillars simply held up their 
heads for a minute, and then commenced eat- 
ing again. Bit by bit, they ate up the leaves 
until the cabbage was ragged and useless, and 
the gardener coming along pulled it up and 
threw it on the rubbish heap. 

"Oh, I wish I had listened to the elder tree," 
exclaimed the cabbage root, "but I never 
thought such tiny eggs could contain such 
dreadful destructive creatures." 

Envies are like those eggs on the cabbage 
leaf. They nested in the heart of Cain until 
they grew to such power as to master him and 
make him a murderer and a vagabond on the 
face of the earth. They grew in the hearts 
of the sons of Jacob until they ate out all 
love and sympathy and brotherly compassion, 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 



153 



and they sold Joseph into slavery. Look out 
for the envies that nestle in your soul. The 
junk pile is the only safe place for them. 

Peter gives another specification to which 
many people need to give heed — that of "evil 
speaking." We can trace a large share of the 
trouble in the world to this. It was this kind of 
speaking that Jesus meant when he exclaimed 
so sternly, "I say unto you that for ever}' idle 
word that men shall speak, they shall give ac- 
count thereof in the day of judgment." People 
speak recklessly so often of the character or 
reputation of another, not for a moment un- 
derstanding the deadly weapon which they 
use. They do not intend the awful harm which 
they bring about. It is to them but an idle 
word in conversation. But it mars and wounds 
and kills, and nothing the speaker can ever do 
can eradicate the harm which has been accom- 
plished. Robert Louis Stevenson writes with 
insight as well as indignation when he charac- 
terizes such speech: 

"I am 'the smiler with the knife/ 

The battener upon garbage, I : 
Dear heaven, with such a rancid life, 
Were it not better for to die?" 



154 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Many an evil speech would be shut back be- 
hind the clenched teeth if the one tempted to 
speak it could realize how impossible it is to 
overtake it after it is once let loose. 

" 'Careful with fire' is good advice, we know; 
'Careful with words' is ten time better so; 
Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead, 
But God himself can't kill them when they're said." 

I have been told by a hunter of big game in 
the East that tigers born of a man-eating 
tigress are always man-eaters, for they get 
their first lessons in hunting from their mother. 
A tigress teaches her whelps to hunt as a cat 
does her kitten, by bringing them live prey to 
practise on. Some years ago, in one of the hill 
districts of India, a tigress was killed whose 
taking off caused much rejoicing among the 
natives. She was known all over India as the 
man-eater who once had given her whelps a 
live man to play with. She carried off the man 
from an open hut in the forest where some 
woodcutters were sleeping. His companions 
took refuge in trees, and from their place of 
safety saw her take the man alive to where 
the whelps were waiting close by and lay him 
down before them. As the man attempted to 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 



155 



crawl away the whelps would cling to his legs 
with teeth and claws, the tigress looking on 
and purring with pleasure. Do you know, I 
believe that gossipers and scandal-mongers are 
usually developed in the same way. The chil- 
dren of a scandal-loving mother or father are 
almost certain to develop the same man-eating 
trait. A bloodthirsty tigress teaching her 
whelps to play with a live man, and thus teach- 
ing them how to kill, is not an exaggerated 
illustration of the viciousness of a family 
brought up to gossip and speak evil of their 
neighbors. 

There is another kind of evil-speaking of 
which some of us who never slander are often 
in danger of being guilty — viz., a critical cen- 
soriousness of those who are close to us, whom 
we really love. Many good people make their 
goodness unattractive by their manner of 
speaking to the people with whom they live and 
deal. We may try to excuse ourselves for a 
cruelly blunt manner of speaking or a quick, 
sharp utterance, that is like the lash of a whip 
or a stroke of a dagger to the one who receives 
it, by saying that it is our temperament and we 
do not mean anything by it. In God's name, 



156 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



let us be honest with our own selves. A large 
part of the sorrow and strife and lack of har- 
mony in good homes comes from this very 
thing. If the sharp words could be banished, 
if the cruel, critical words could be silenced, if 
a little more consideration could be had before 
words are spoken at all, how many aching 
hearts would be soothed and how many marred 
careers would be made perfect. 

"It takes so little to make us sad, 
Just a slighting word or a doubting sneer, 
Just a scornful smile on some lips held dear; 
And our footsteps lag, though the goal seemed near, 
And we lose the courage and hope we had — 
So> little it takes to make us sad. 

"It takes so little to make us glad, 
Just a cheering clasp of a friendly hand, 
Just a word from one who can understand; 
And we finish the task we long had planned, 
And we lose the doubt and the fear we had — 
So little it takes to make us glad." 

III. When we look at all these things which 
are so common among us, and note how much 
junk we carry in our conversation and deal- 
ing, we wonder sometimes whether there is any 
chance to build up in the world that perfectly 
beautiful and splendid life of Jesus Christ. 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 157 

But we get hope when we listen to Peter as to 
the method of accomplishment. We are not to 
throw away these things by our own will power 
or keep ourselves by our own watchfulness 
from again becoming victims of them, but 
through Jesus Christ we are to be born again 
into a new spirit, to be nourished by spiritual 
milk, to taste in our very souls the precious- 
ness of Jesus, and through our association with 
him are to be lifted far above the junk 
pile into newness of life. Everything that is 
good and fine can come to us only through as- 
sociation with Jesus, but through him and in 
fellowship with him everything that is good 
enough to be true can become possible in you 
and in me. 

Some years ago I was poking about an old 
stone smokehouse of the type used a hundred 
years ago, with an entrance through only one 
door. I came on a long, snail-like looking 
creature that was an entire stranger to me. 
On one end which I took to be its head there 
seemed to be, on the top, a single eye — very 
large and very bright and dazzling. It seemed 
to look me through and through. It seemed 
uncanny with that single staring eye, and the 



158 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



whole creature was loathsome. I got it on a 
shingle and carried it in to the telephone, where 
I would have it close at hand to describe, and 
then I called up a friend of mine whose special 
business it was to know all about bugs and 
worms and snails and things of that kind, and 
told him what I had found, and asked him what 
it was. He laughed merrily and said that the 
end which I thought was its head was its tail, 
and what I had taken to be an eye was not an 
eye at all. And furthermore he told me that 
what I had found was the caterpillar of one 
of the most glorious moths or butterflies that is 
ever seen in that part of the world, and that if 
I would put the repulsive creature away in the 
dark, after a while he would throw off his ugli- 
ness and fly forth in dazzling beauty and glory 
among the summer flowers. As I carried the 
ugly thing back to give him a chance for his 
career I said to him, "You ugly thing, you are 
just like man." When I look out over the 
world's squalor and selfishness and sin, when 
I see it wallowing in its malice and guile and 
hypocrisies and envies and evil speaking, I lose 
hope and am ready to despair of mankind. But 
when I turn from man in his wickedness and 



THE CHRISTIAN'S JUNK PILE 159 



sinfulness and look at Jesus Christ with all the 
beauty and glory of his character, arrayed in 
all those graces that make manhood splendid 
and glorious, and see him take hold of a poor 
drunken tinker like John Bunyan and lift him 
up out of the mire and the wretchedness of sin ; 
when I see going to the junk pile the things 
that marred and wounded and destroyed him, 
and behold emerging under the influence of 
Jesus Christ those traits of character so beau- 
tiful and lovely in him; when I read in the 
Word of God the promise that if a man has 
this hope in him he purifieth himself, and that 
after a while when we meet Christ in the skies 
and see him face to face we shall be like him, 
my heart grows big with hope and courage for 
mankind, and for myself. 

Dear friends, let us taste of the graciousness 
of Jesus Christ. Let us, through fellowship 
with him, lay aside everything that is out of 
harmony with his character of love. If we do 
this, the whole journey of life shall grow sweet 
in the fellowship which his love will bring to us. 

A schooner arrived at Port Townsend, 
Washington, a while ago from Honolulu, 
which had had an interesting experience, A 



160 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



hundred and fifty miles off Cape Flattery it 
ran into an immense flock of wild canary birds, 
thousands of which settled on the rigging and 
other parts of the vessel. The sailors furnished 
their feathered visitors with food and drink, 
and multitudes of them remained on board con- 
tentedly, singing their sweet lays until the 
schooner reached port. God has many singing 
birds which he sends to rejoice the hearts of 
those who sail stedfastly toward the port of 
heaven. A good conscience, a hope of heaven, 
assurance of reunion with loved ones, the 
friendship of Jesus and all who love him — these 
are some of the sweet singers that may rejoice 
us by the way. 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 



"Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, 
that ye should follow his steps : who did no sin, neither was 
guile found in his mouth : who, when he was reviled, reviled 
not again ; when he suffered, threatened not ; but committed 
himself to him that judgeth righteously : who his "own self 
bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having 
died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose 
stripes ye were healed." — 1 Peter 2 : 21-24. 



UR theme lies in this, that Jesus Christ 



V_y himself was the first Christian. We have 
a right to call ourselves Christians only as we 
are loyal to him and accept him as the pace- 
maker for our lives. It is for us to find, if we 
can, in the pursuit of our theme some of those 
great characteristics of Christ which underlie 
his marvelous personality and career, that we 
may find instruction and inspiration for the 
building up of our own characters and the con- 
duct of our lives. 

I. The first great characteristic of the life of 
Jesus suggested in the text is his self-denial, 
his suffering for others, the complete surren- 




161 



162 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



der of himself to the one great purpose which 
dominated him — the salvation of humanity. 
It is that which first of all separates Christ 
from every other great personality. The first 
thought about Jesus is the thought of him as 
a Savior. In a book published a few years ago 
a traveler tells the story of finding in Lhassa, 
in Tibet, a devout man who had gone to the 
Catholic chapel station to see a priest, but they 
were at service. While waiting, he looked 
through the door, and, for the first time in his 
life, saw the image of Christ upon the cross. 
He waited till the service was finished, and 
then, forgetting all the other business on which 
he came, asked what the figure meant. When 
they told him that our great and infinite God, 
in his love, had come down to earth and taken 
our nature, and died, and rose again, he was 
lost in wonder. After half an hour of silence, 
he fell on his face before the cross, and said: 
"Thou art the only true Buddha. Henceforth 
I will worship none but thee." The kingdom 
had come like a lightning flash to that man and 
had revealed to him the Savior and Friend, 
and he became a Christian. 

The Christ has set the pace for the noblest 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 163 

manhood for all time. The noblest success can 
never come to men who toil with selfish calcula- 
tion, in cold blood ; it is achieved only through 
that supreme surrender and sacrifice which 
counts no cost too great, or counts not the cost 
at all, so that some great end is accomplished. 

The ordinary affairs of human life are full 
of illustrations of this truth. I saw a story 
recently of a man high in authority in the 
English government. He was once a youth in 
a law office in a provincial town. The office 
was situated within sight of the railway station, 
and the heads of the firm often called upon 
certain of the clerks to go on long railway 
journeys at very short notice. This youth 
noticed that there was often very considerable 
delay in their setting out, because they had to 
go home and pack a bag before they started. 
He determined that if ever his turn should 
come, he would be ready at a moment's notice 
to leave. He brought down to the office a 
small bag containing what he would need if 
called upon, and kept it under his desk in 
readiness for the hoped-for opportunity. His 
fellow clerks joked him unmercifully about 
this ; but the chief, probably hearing about it, 



164 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



at last gave him his chance. Coming to him 
hurriedly, one day, he said: "Do you think you 
can catch that train now coming into the sta- 
tion? Go, and we will telegraph instructions 
to you at the next stopping-place. , ' He 
grabbed his bag in one hand and his hat in the 
other without a moment's delay and caught the 
train. So it was that by doing more than he 
was compelled to do, more than he was paid 
to do, he got his chance, and rapidly climbed 
to success. He counted neither comfort nor 
hours; he looked only at the goal. And so 
Jesus Christ, looking forward beyond the 
cross, saw the travail of his soul and was sat- 
isfied. 

In the higher realm of life Christ is our pace- 
maker. If we are to be the great servants of 
humanity, great helpers of our time, great 
Christians, we must follow our pace-maker in 
this spirit of unthinking, uncalculating giving 
of ourselves to Christian service. J. Wilbur 
Chapman tells how he had a talk with General 
Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, a 
little while before his.going home, and he asked 
that flaming torch of evangelism the secret of 
his wonderful usefulness in the world in rescu- 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 165 



ing the fallen and bringing hope to the dark- 
est spots of the earth. The old hero, with eyes 
full of tears, said earnestly: "I will tell you 
the secret — God has had all there was of me. 
There have been men with greater brains than 
I, men with greater opportunities; but from 
the day I got the poor of London on my heart 
and a vision of what Jesus Christ would do for 
them, I made up my mind that God should 
have all of William Booth there was. If any- 
thing has been achieved, it is because God has 
had all the adoration of my heart, all the power 
of my will, and all the influence of my life." 
That was the secret — a man all aflame with 
love and devotion, poured forth uncalculat- 
ingly without counting the cost, in the service 
of Christ. And many men in other lines of 
service have thus followed the great pace- 
maker. Sir Robertson Nicoll says it thrills the 
heart to read of Berthelot, refusing to take out 
patents which would have brought him a colos- 
sal fortune, altho he had six children to 
keep. Offered by sugar refiners a life annuity 
of at least 250,000 francs for a new method of 
extracting glucose, he said, "I will give it to 
you for nothing. We work for honor in 



166 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



French laboratories/' Pasteur sowed broad- 
cast his tubes of safety and life. Chevreul 
had only to say a word to become master of 
millions. He kept his lips resolutely closed 
and died comparatively poor. Curie, because 
he wanted the precious stuff to experiment on 
for the good of mankind, rejected a rich man's 
offer of a fortune for a few decigrams of 
radium. The glory of man is that not one of us 
is so humble and insignificant but that he may 
catch this spirit of Christ and so be enabled to 
live in the clear atmosphere of love and help- 
fulness. When we catch a glimpse of this pos- 
sibility, we are thrilled with the consciousness 
that it is not by getting or by hoarding, but 
by helping and sharing, that the true happi- 
ness of life may be found. 

"A little more cross and a little less creed, 
A little more beauty of brotherly deed; 
A little more bearing of things to be borne, 
With faith in the infinite triumph of morn. 
A little less doubt and a little more do 
Of the simple, sweet service each day brings to view." 

II. Jesus Christ sets the pace for us in en- 
thusiasm for humanity. Not for some high 
class or caste of humanity, but enthusiasm and 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 161 



love for men, women, and children of the com- 
mon human kind. Our modem civilization is 
often very heathen in this respect. A young 
lady in a wealthy family of high social and 
fashionable position went one morning into 
the conservatory and found there a little bird 
that in the night had beaten out its life against 
the glass. She brought it into the breakfast 
room and showed it to a party of friends, and 
she was so deeply moved with compassion that 
she dropt a tear on its bright plumage. She 
was so sorry for the death of the bird. At the 
breakfast following a discussion arose about 
missions, and she who had been so sorry for the 
bird spoke about the folly of enthusiasm for 
the missions to the heathen. She said: "It is 
scarcely credible that these black people have 
souls." And yet she belonged to the company 
of those who call themselves after the name of 
him who said, "Of how much more value are 
ye than the birds !" A tremendous revolution 
would be brought about speedily if we all let 
Jesus set the pace for us in our estimate of 
humanity and enthusiasm to help it. 

I have just come upon this true story: A 
young Swedish woman left her home for the 



168 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



United States to join a young man to whom 
she had been engaged for a number of years. 
They were to be married in New York City. 
On her way to America she stopt three 
months in London to learn as much as she 
could of the English tongue, after which she 
sailed for New York. When she arrived 
there, the young man did not appear. Instead, 
she found a note, and that note read like this: 
I am unable to meet you in New York, to my 
sorrow, but I will meet you in a certain inland 
town, naming the town where they had in- 
tended to live. He gave her directions how to 
get there, and two days later she arrived in 
that Western town. She expected, of course, 
to meet her fiance, but was again disappointed. 
She went to the best hotel in the town, think- 
ing he would come, but he did not come. Two 
months later she found that he had died sud- 
denly; that was the reason he did not meet 
her as he agreed. While she waited in the 
hotel for him she was observed as a beautiful 
foreigner, but nobody spoke to her. At length, 
she went to the office and talked to the young 
man behind the desk, told him her situation, 
that her money was gone, and she did not 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 169 

know what to do; and he told it around the 
hotel. Finally, a man came who looked old 
enough to be her father, and he seemed courte- 
ous and nice; he talked to her in tender and 
friendly and fatherly words. He told her that 
he would be only too glad to take her to a good 
Christian home in the city where she could stay 
until some arrangement could be made. She 
got into a carriage with him and he took her to 
a house beautiful on the outside, but the mo- 
ment that the girl entered the door of that 
place she saw she had been caught in a trap 
and she began to weep and to beg that she 
might be put in touch with the police. But 
the head of the house said: "No police for 
this place. Once in here, always in here." But 
through the compassion of another wretched 
inmate of that house she managed to slip to 
the telephone and inform the police. The 
police came and took her to the police station. 
There by the help of the police matron she got 
to use the telephone and called up a minister. 
That minister came to see her, and there in the 
reception room at the police station she told 
him her sad story. He doubted very much if 
it were true, but nevertheless he was forced to 



170 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



take it; and after she had finished in agony 
and sorrow, the tears raining down, he said: 
"My good woman, let us pray"; and he got 
down on his knees. But she did not. Instead 
of getting down, she got up on her feet, and 
she cried: "Oh, Mister, I don't want your 
prayers now, I want a friend!'' It was a re- 
buke that went straight to his heart, for he felt 
that she was right. She wanted a human hand 
that she could take hold of to guide her, she 
wanted a human sympathy and fellowship that 
could give her aching heart the comfort of its 
communion and brotherhood. Dear friends, 
what we need above everything in this modern 
life of ours is that we shall follow our pace- 
maker in going about doing good, in enthu- 
siasm for our fellows that will lead us to prac- 
tical helpfulness, day by day, making life easier 
and safer for the men and women about us. 
It was said of Jesus Christ that the common 
people heard him gladly. He had such a 
genius for friendship, he was such a compan- 
ionable man, that sinful, sorrowing people, 
hard-working people, and people with all sorts 
of burdens, found it easy to open their hearts 
to him, and thus made it possible for him to 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 



171 



help them. We too must follow the pace he 
has set for us in this regard. 

"Sorrow comes and sorrow goes, 

Life is flecked with shine and shower. 
Now the tear of grieving flows, 

Now we smile in happy hour; 
Death awaits us every one, 

Toiler, dreamer, preacher, writer, 
Let us, then, ere life be done, 

Make the world ai little brighter. 

"Burdens that our neighbors bear, 

Easier let us try to make them, 
Chains, perhaps, our neighbors wear, 

Let us do our best to break them; 
From the straitened hand and mind 

Let usi loose the binding fetter, 
Let us, as the Lord designed, 

Make the world a little better. 

"Selfish brooding sears the soul, 

Fills the mind with clouds of sorrow, 
Darkens all the shining goal, 

Of the sun-illumined morrow. 
Wherefore should our lives be spent 

Daily growing blind and blinder — 
Let us, as the Master meant, 

Make the world a little kinder I" 

III. We must follow the pace Jesus Christ 
has set for us in the fight against evil. Jesus' 
sympathy and compassion for the weak and 



172 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



sinful and broken men and women he met was 
no weak sentimentalism. His tears of sym- 
pathy kept close pace with his red-hot indig- 
nation against oppression and wrong-doing. 
Many people have a distorted idea of the man- 
hood of Jesus Christ. They think of him as so 
gentle and so kind and sympathetic and meek 
that they can not conceive of him having power 
to get mad with red-hot, indignant wrath at 
anything. The Christ portrayed to us in the 
gospel is no such goody-goody creature as 
that. If you will turn to the nineteenth chap- 
ter of Luke's life of Jesus Christ, you will find 
that Christ, on the very day that he wept over 
the city of Jerusalem and cried out in his great 
sympathy for the sorrows that were to come 
upon the poor people there, went directly from 
those blinding tears into the temple and found 
there a lot of greedy, grafting scoundrels who 
were enriching themselves by the desecration 
of the house of God, took a whip and in his 
wrath drove them from the temple, and with 
flashing eyes exclaimed: "It is written, My 
house is the house of prayer : but ye have made 
it a den of thieves." Christ could weep hot * 
tears of pity, and he could flame with the pas- 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 173 

sion of deep indignation. And we, as repre- 
sentatives of Jesus Christ, must not lose the 
power to get mad against oppression and 
cruelty and meanness that brings sorrow and 
suffering to our weaker brothers. Nothing so 
convinces the world that Christ is a living per- 
sonality, a living spirit in the midst of Chris- 
tians, as a vital, courageous warfare on our 
part against those who oppress humanity. We 
must show the sympathy and compassion of 
Jesus Christ when we deal with those who 
have been hurt and robbed and harmed by sin ; 
but if our sympathy and compassion is real 
and genuine, and not mere sentimental twad- 
dle, we shall show to the wicked oppressor of 
the weak the courage and indignation of Christ 
against those who lay burdens too heavy to be 
borne upon his brothers and sisters. 

I have read somewhere that on one occasion 
in the time of the first Napoleon, one of his 
veteran officers, a sergeant of the guard, to 
whom Napoleon was everything, said to a 
young soldier with whom he had formed a 
friendship, "Conscript, the Emperor is come, 
the Emperor is here." And the young soldier 
said, "How do you know it, Sergeant? I have 



174 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



just been down to the General's quarters and 
have heard and seen nothing." And the ser- 
geant said, "All the world is up and stirring. 
You don't yet understand it, Conscript; but 
he is here. I feel it in the soles of my feet, 
when he is not come everything limps; but 
now, see down there? Look at those expresses 
galloping along the road. Everything is mov- 
ing. Our enemies have no need of their spec- 
tacles to see if he is with us. They will find 
it out soon enough." And the sergeant laughed 
in his long mustache. Oh, my friends, I pray 
God that our modern church of every name 
and order shall give more signs of the presence 
of Jesus Christ in its courage and activity, in 
its aggressive onward march against sin; in 
its fight against the liquor traffic, and the 
white slave traffic, and the oppressive and 
wicked combinations of grafting finance. In 
all these places where the enemy of souls 
throws out his hosts of evil to battle, may we 
be so conscious of the presence of Christ and 
be so inspired by his leadership, that the world 
shall know that Jesus is with us because of 
the boldness and unconquerable courage which 
we show in the face of the enemy. 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 175 

IV. Jesus sets the pace for us in his serene 
faith in the ultimate triumph of humanity — 
the final triumph of good over evil in human 
life. In the darkest hours of his earthly career, 
when he was looking straight into the garden 
of Gethsemane and at the cross on Calvary, 
Jesus was promising his disciples that his joy 
should remain with them, and fill them full of 
joy, a joy that no man should be able to take 
away from them. And that is one of the great 
mysteries of life, that sorrow is often born out 
of joy and joy is often born out of sorrow, that 
laughter and tears are often mingled together 
and one is often the outgrowth of the other. 
Christ has put the seal of glory on them both, 
and they both mean good to us. 

"If love were always laughter 
And grief were always tears, 
With nothing to come after 

To mark the waiting years, 
I'd pray a life of love to you, 
Sent down from heaven above to you, 
And never grief come near to you, 
To spread its shadow, dear, to you — 
If love were always laughter 
And grief were always tears. 



176 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"But grief brings often laughter, 
And love, ah, love brings tears! 
And both leave ever after 

Their blessings on the years; 
So I, dear heart, would sue for you 
A mingling of the two for you, 
That grief may lend its calm to you, 
And love may send its balm to you — 
For grief brings often laughter 
And love brings often tears." 

The greatest men and women of our day 
and of every day have caught from Jesus 
Christ the secret of his hope and faith in the 
ultimate triumph of good in the life of man, 
and have been comforted and made serene by 
it in their supreme struggles. Great souls like 
John Howard and Dorothea Dix and Frances 
Willard and John Bright and Gladstone, and 
multitudes of others, have been the great op- 
timists of their day, seeing more clearly than 
others the hurts of humanity, but, following 
the great pace-maker, looking up the shining 
pathway of history to eternal triumph under 
the leadership of Jesus Christ. When Lord 
Salisbury stood up in the British Parliament 
to speak on the death of Gladstone, he made 
this great statement : "He will be remembered 
not so much for the causes in which he was 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 



177 



engaged or the political projects which he 
favored, but as a great example, to which his- 
tory hardly furnishes a parallel, of a great 
Christian man." 

Harry Steel Morrison has written a little 
book in which he tells of his crossing the Atlan- 
tic, as a boy of sixteen, to interview Mr. Glad- 
stone for a New York newspaper. Arriving 
in London, this venturesome boy at once 
opened up correspondence with Gladstone, 
never dreaming that he was trying to see a 
man who was every day denied to famous peo- 
ple. He was refused by a secretary, a son, and 
a daughter, but finally, through persistence, 
got a hearing from Mrs. Gladstone. He told 
her his mission, and showed her a New York 
newspaper containing a narrative of his expe- 
riences, as well as a drawing of himself, seated 
in the castle interviewing Mr. Gladstone. Mrs. 
Gladstone was very much amused, saying that 
if Mr. Gladstone would see him it would at 
least be a change for him. Mr. Gladstone did 
see him, that sixteen-year-old boy, treated him 
like a young prince, and sent him away with 
a new outlook upon life. Writing of that 
interview afterward, Morrison said Gladstone 



ITS 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



made one statement which will remain with 
him always, "Remember," said the "Grand 
Old Man," "that fame and notoriety are not 
the things which count at the last. I would be 
very unhappy if I felt that in being a states- 
man I have sacrificed any of the principles I 
embraced with the Christian faith." There is 
the secret of the man's greatness. 

But it may be that some of you who hear 
me are broken-hearted at this glimpse of the 
grandeur of the noble Christian life, and are 
saying to yourselves in despair, "There was 
a time when this would have been an inspira- 
tion to me, and when it would have been pos- 
sible to have heard it as a bugle call to battle, 
but it is too late ! I am wounded and crippled 
by sin, I am the prisoner of evil habit, and I 
can not rise to this inspiring life, however 
grand it may be." But thank God, I have a 
message for you, for Jesus is seeking after the 
straying and the wounded and the weak that 
are ready to perish, that he may succor them 
and bid them hope again. My good friend, 
Frederick Shannon, in one of his beautiful ser- 
mons, calls attention to an occasion during the 
Franco-Prussian War, at the siege of Paris, 



FOLLOWING OUR PACE-MAKER 179 

when the French went out under cover of night 
to gather up their wounded. Moving about 
among the injured, they called in low tones, 
so as not to betray their presence to the enemy : 
"If there are any wounded here, we are your 
friends, come to help you. If you are injured, 
let it be quietly known, and we will take you 
to safety and comfort." And so, my friends, 
Jesus moves quietly about from place to place, 
over the battlefield of life; his heart is full of 
tears, and his htaling touch is full of health, 
and he calls out of the deep night to injured 
souls: "I have come for you. O come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and 
I will give you rest." A very earnest Chris- 
tian minister was holding a meeting in New 
England during which he came into conversa- 
tion with the leading woman in the town, and 
she told him that she had often been the guest 
of royalty, and gave the names of kings and 
queens at whose courts she had been welcomed. 
She told him also the names of famous people 
in New York who represented the highest 
type of social life, where she was often a guest 
and whom she frequently had as guests in her 
own house. But she told the minister that in 



180 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



all the round of social pleasure she had an ach- 
ing heart. And then the earnest man of God 
very tenderly presented to her the plan of sal- 
vation through Jesus Christ, and she bowed 
her head, and he thought he detected traces of 
tears coursing down her cheeks. Finally he 
said, "Will you accept Jesus as your Savior?" 
She answered in a whisper, "Yes, I will." 
Some days after this he had the privilege of 
meeting her again. She said that all the years 
that she had devoted purely to pleasure when 
put over against the few days that she had 
passed since she had given herself to Jesus 
Christ were as nothing. She said, "Jesus is 
mine, pardon is mine, forgiveness is mine." 



THE BEAUTIFUL MAN IN 
THE HEART 



"But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incor- 
ruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the 
sight of God of great price." — 1 Peter 3 : 4. 

THERE is an old Eastern allegory which 
tells the story of a traveler who arrived in 
a country where the children played at marbles 
with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other 
precious gems. "These are doubtless the sons 
of some powerful king," said the traveler, as he 
bowed respectfully before them. The children, 
laughing, soon made him perceive that they 
were only the street boys and that the gems 
were only the common pebbles of that coun- 
try. This garden of Peter's in which we are 
strolling and studying is like that. Whichever 
way we turn there are beautiful things, 
thoughts that stir our souls and quicken us to 
high endeavor. Where could there be a more 
beautiful sentence describing the superior im- 
portance of the invisible inner life over the 

181 



182 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



outward life than this striking figure, "The 
hidden man of the heart"? 

If you read the entire paragraph connected 
with the text you will notice that Peter has 
in mind the temptation to over-adornment in 
decorating the body. Indeed it was addrest at 
first specially to women, and Peter uses it as a 
caution concerning the fashions and manner of 
dress. Human nature was the same then as 
it is now; the women liked to look pretty and 
the men liked to see them that way; for tho 
the women have to stand the brunt of most that 
is said about the folly of fashion, I suspect 
that George Eliot was right when she makes 
one of her characters in one of her great novels 
say, "I am not for denying that women are 
foolish, for God Almighty made them to match 
men." But Peter uses his caution to point out 
what is the supremely important thing to both 
men and women, and that is the true devel- 
opment and perfecting of the real man that 
lives within. 

It is all right to take care of the body, but 
we must not forget the clothing of the soul 
which is infinitely more important. Brierly, 
the English editor, has an essay on "well- 



MAN. IN THE HEART 183 

dressed souls." Jesus, speaking to John on 
the Isle of Patmos, utters warning to some 
who think they are rich and handsome and 
fashionably clothed, but are unaware that in 
the more important realm of the spirit they 
are naked and poor and ugly. Charles Kings- 
ley said that beauty is worthy of admiration 
only when it is "the outward sacrament of the 
beauty of the soul within." And Charles 
Kingsley was true to that utterance, for as his 
last breath was passing and his eyes were open- 
ing on unseen beauties, he faintly whispered, 
"How beautiful God is." 

I. The first suggestion that springs out of 
our theme is the importance of soul mastery, 
the inner self made beautiful and masterful so 
that the conduct of life may safely come from 
the hidden man in the heart. Strange that 
many people wise enough to know that the 
physical manhood must be kept clean from 
contamination of evil and from poisonous 
things fail to understand the infinitely greater 
importance of keeping the inner man free from 
the association with evil things that must for- 
ever hurt and mar the tenacious spiritual per- 
sonality. Perhaps there never was an age more 



184 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



given to this folly than the age we now experi- 
ence. Night is turned into day, life is turned 
inside out, and modern fiction with its horrible 
realism is seeking to make innocence in respect 
to the worst things in the world impossible 
even to children. But it is well for us to reflect 
that the hidden man of the heart with his sensi- 
tive plates of memory is vastly happier and 
stronger by not knowing many of the unneces- 
sary evils of the world. People talk about 
"seeing life." They mean just out of curios- 
ity to look on the seamy side, the wicked side 
of worldly life, as tho that were a desirable 
education and development to character. But 
there could never be greater folly. The sen- 
sitive memory must forever hold the filthy and 
coarsening influence of pictures of evil, and I 
have known men redeemed and transformed 
by the grace of God into wholesome manhood 
who would give anything if they could burn 
out of their minds and memories pictures of 
evil that were received in that way. I say to 
every young man and young woman, protect 
the hidden man in the heart from every vicious 
sight within your power, if you would make 
him as beautiful as possible. Rudyard Kipling 



MAN IN THE HEART 



185 



in one of his virile songs gives utterance to 
the melancholy regret and despair of men 
whose minds had been poisoned in their youth. 

"We have done with hope and honor, we are lost to love an/1 
truth, 

We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, 
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our 
youth, 

God help us, for we knew the worst too young." 

Young people think that they must "have 
their fling/' as they call it, or life will be 
monotonous and dull; but I assure you that 
there is nothing in this world so monotonous 
and so dull in its ugly misery, after the first 
flush is gone, as sin. George Arnold makes 
this very clear in a few lines on "The Lees of 
Life": " 

"I have had my will, 

Tasted every pleasure, 
I have drunk my fill 

Of the purple measure, 
Life has lost its zest, 
Sorrow is my guest, 

Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter; 
Give me rest. 

"Love once filled the bowl, 
Running o'er with blisses, 
Made my very soul 

Drunk with crimson kisses; 



186 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



But I drank it dry, 
Love has passed me by, 

Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter; 
Let me die." 

Peter, with his suggestion of the meek and 
quiet spirit which is held to be so beautiful and 
costly a thing in the sight of God, brings to 
our minds the point at which perhaps more 
than any other most of us are tempted to be 
careless, and that is at the point of self-control 
in our temper. If the hidden man in the heart 
is beautiful in spirit and has power to master 
the tongue and the eye, and make them to go 
quietly along rational and loving channels, 
then the whole life will be clothed upon with 
beauty and grace. The folly of uncontrolled 
temper works such havoc among us that it is 
strange we do not all join in a campaign 
against it. Arnold Bennett, an English 
writer, has recently written a little book en- 
titled The Human Machine, in which among 
other things he discourses with picturesque 
eloquence on the subject of temper. He com- 
pares a man in a temper to a house on fire. 
You can not put out the fire, you can not help 
the owner. If you directed his attention to 



MAN IN THE HEART 



187 



the flame, he would instantly begin to strike 
matches, pour on petroleum, and fan the fire, 
violently resenting interference. You can 
only stand and watch the flames leap higher 
and higher. When the ruin is accomplished, 
the owner curses himself. But there is small 
satisfaction in that. 

A man who loses his temper is simply being 
burned out. There is a wreck of dignity, of 
common sense, and justice. Mr. Bennett is 
convinced that temper can be controlled, and 
he suggests that as a man in a temper is in- 
variably ridiculous and supremely contempt- 
ible, he should be taught to see himself as he is. 
He advises that he should concentrate regu- 
larly and intensely upon the ideas: "When I 
lose my temper, when I get ruffled, when that 
mysterious vibration runs through me, I am 
making a donkey of myself, a donkey, and a 
donkey. I am behaving like a great baby. I 
look a fool. I am a spectacle bereft of dig- 
nity. Everybody despises me, smiles at me in 
secret, disdains me, the idiotic ass, with whom 
it is impossible to reason." Somebody once 
wrote an essay "On the Advantages of Being 
a Cantankerous Fool." But Mr. Bennett 



188 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



brushes these advantages aside with little 
mercy, and declares that a man with an uncer- 
tain temper in the house is a man who goes 
about with a loaded revolver sticking from his 
pocket. All consideration for fairness and 
reason must be subordinated in that house to 
the fear of the revolver. Therefore such peace 
as is maintained in that house is often a shame- 
ful and an unjust peace. 

We are likely to laugh over a discussion of 
this type, but few things cause more tears in 
the world, and more hidden aches of the heart 
that make people old prematurely, and dis- 
courage the best endeavor, than the failure of 
control in the power house within our souls. 

II. Christ in the heart is the infallible secret 
of beauty and serenity of spirit. Some of you 
have seen and heard that wonderful patriarch 
of missions, John G. Paton, who planted the 
gospel in the New Hebrides. His wife died 
when they were laboring together in a savage 
island, and had up to that time made practi- 
cally no converts. The missionary had to dig 
her grave himself and to lay her there with 
the dark, hostile faces around him. "If it had 
not been for Jesus," he says, "and the presence 



MAN IN THE HEART 



189 



he vouchsafed me there, I should have gone 
mad and died beside that lonely grave." But 
because Jesus dwelt in the hidden man of his 
heart, he overcame his grief and stood loyally 
by his work and won those islands from heath- 
enism to Christ and to a beautiful Christian 
civilization. 

These great hidden sorrows that men bury 
in their breasts through fellowship with him 
who was "a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with grief" lift men up and make them great. 

"Not for the blazoned sorrows, Lord, 

That flaunt their purple in the market-place, 
But for grief's fearful, secret sword, 

That hides its piercing from the daylight's face, 
Pity, I say. 

"Not to those ills the world may know, 

Nor plaints, whose moanings all the world may 
hear, 

But to the lonely midnight's woe, 

That lurks 'neath laughter in the noontide clear, 
Give ease to-day. 

"Not for those weeping ones, who share 

Their tears with others, in a mingled rain, 
But for the silent brave, who bear 
With smiles their burden of an unguessed pain, 
For these I pray." 



190 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Jesus said to his friends when he was about 
to leave them that they were not to be afraid, 
because they should triumph over the world, 
" because greater is he that is in you than he 
that is in the world." And through all the cen- 
turies the presence of Christ brings with it that 
comfort to lonely hearts and pure souls. The 
world is great, fiercely great; the world is 
strong, lurid in its strength; the sea of life is 
torn to white caps by the winds of temptation 
and struggle, but in the midst of the world and 
coming across the waves, as he came walking 
on the sea of Galilee in the storm, Christ brings 
peace to every soul that truly trusts him. In 
that land of Gadara he cleansed the poor 
demon-possest man, who could not control 
himself, whom the community could not con- 
trol. When Jesus had taken possession, he 
went clothed and in his right mind to speak 
with loving interest to the people who had 
hitherto feared him. To-day Christ is in the 
world with the same marvelous power, and 
what we need and all that we need, to make 
beautiful in self-control and in peace the hid- 
den man of the heart is that Christ shall dwell 
there all the while, the honored guest in our 



MAN IN THE HEART 



191 



souls. Then the strife and discord shall cease, 
and the fragrance of his loving presence shall 
make beautiful the influence that goes forth 
from us. There is a little poem which I wish 
every one of us from the depths of our inmost 
hearts could say to Jesus, as an expression of 
our consciousness of his presence in us and our 
gratitude to him : 

"As a perfume doth remain 
In the folds where it hath lain, 

So the thought of you remaining 
Deeply folded in my brain, 
Will not leave me : all things leave me : 
You remain. 

"Other thoughts may come and go, 
Other moments I may know 

That shall waft me in their going 
As a breath blown to and fro, 
Fragrant memories : fragrant memories 
Come and go. 

"Only thoughts of you remain 
In my heart where they have lain, 

Perfumed thoughts of you remaining, 
A hid sweetness in my brain. 
Others leave me : all things leave me : 
You remain." 

III. Our theme impresses me that the refor- 
mation and uplift of men, either as individuals 



192 



THE WIXDS OF GOD 



or in the mass of society, can not be accom- 
plished without spiritual transformation. Here 
is where the reformer who leaves Christ out 
of account must always fail. Men say, "Give 
people better homes and better wages, let them 
have decent clothing and wholesome food, and 
shorter hours, and a little chance to play, and 
a breath of nature in air and sky and forest, 
and you have solved the troublesome problems 
of humanity." But how foolish all that is in 
the face of the fact that multitudes of the rich- 
est men and women of our time, who have in- 
finite opportunity to play, with automobiles 
and yachts and the world for a playground, 
are morally leprous and unclean, and seem to 
be degraded instead of being uplifted by the 
prodigal luxury and freedom and riches that 
have been poured into their lap. Xow, I will 
not give place to any man in my sympathy for 
the unfortunate and the unjustly treated. I 
maintain and am always ready to contend that 
the Golden Rule should apply in the dealing 
between employer and employee, that every 
Christian man and woman should be careful 
to keep the attitude of Jesus Christ and live 
the life of love without caste or class, until 



MAN IN THE HEART 



193 



men everywhere have a fair chance for a 
healthy, wholesome life in the enjoyment of 
all the blessings that God bestows upon us in 
this wonderful world. But let us not be de- 
ceived. Sin is just as ugly and as vicious and 
persistent in a palace as it is in a hovel. The 
kind of house a man lives in will not determine 
the character of the hidden man of the heart 
who lives in his breast and dictates to his spirit 
and conduct. No, you never can lift men up 
into the noblest life, whether they are rich or 
poor, without spiritual transformation that 
will bring them into fellowship and communion 
with Christ. Suppose you get absolute justice 
in the labor world, so that every man and every 
family have a good house in which to live, 
wholesome food to eat, and pleasant surround- 
ings, you still have not reached the limits of a 
man's needs. No, he is a human being, he is 
a son of God, environed by possibilities that 
stretch as high as heaven and as deep as hell. 
He needs a new heart for his work, encourage- 
ment in his trials, faith to lift him above temp- 
tation, to get out of his mean and sordid spirit 
even more than he needed to get out of his 
mean and sordid slum where he formerly lived ; 



194 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



he needs an outlook above and beyond this 
world of struggle and sorrow. He needs hope, 
the presence of the living God in his soul, and 
to feel that he is something more than an ani- 
mal. He wants a glimpse of heaven and the 
eternal life. He needs to feel the pulsations 
of immortality that will give him courage to 
bear burdens and deny himself for the present 
that he may have eternal glory in the days to 
come. There can be no real reformation that 
is not Christian. If men were only animals 
like sheep and cattle, the socialist plan of re- 
forming the world would work out all right. 
But man is too big for the plan. His interests 
are too far-reaching and too great. The whole 
atmosphere of the universe with its sunshine 
and rain, its laughter and tears, its love and 
hope and fear working together under the 
brooding tenderness of God, makes it impos- 
sible that a human being can live happily in a 
life like ours and a world like this, without the 
consciousness of God and the fellowship of 
Jesus Christ to comfort and strengthen him 
in the assurance that God means love in the 
rain as well as the sunshine and that in the mys- 
tery of God's providence all things are work- 



MAN IN THE HEART 



195 



ing together for good to the man who yields 
himself to the law of love. Give a man this in 
the hidden power house of his soul, and he will 
know that 

"The rain that fell a-yesterday is ruby on the roses, 

Silver on the poplar leaf, and gold on willow stem; 
The grief that chanced a-yesterday is silver that encloses 
Holy loves where time and change shall never trouble 
them. 

"The rain that fell a-yesterday makes all the hillside glisten, 
Coral on the laurel and beryl on the grass; 
The grief that chanced a-yesterday has taught the soul to 
listen 

For whispers of eternity in all the winds that pass." 

IV. Our study must lead us inevitably to 
the conclusion that no outward success, no 
outward victory, can make up to us for the loss 
of a beautiful heart fellowship with Jesus 
Christ that will give to our inner man the traits 
which belong to heaven. This is only another 
way of saying what Jesus said, that "a man's 
life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth." The man is more 
important than the things. And man has not 
risen to his true glory until the hidden man in 
the heart, in his free, unrestrained exercise of 
himself, is beautiful. John Hood in his book, 



196 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



entitled The Beauty of God, says that the law 
lays its hand upon a man's shoulder and says, 
"You shall not do wrong." The gospel lays 
its hand upon his heart, and says, "You shall 
not want to do wrong." This is the only 
effectual cure. No law, however stringent; 
no government, however strong and resolute; 
no police, however numerous and vigilant, can 
protect us from the evils that beset us, so long 
as the heart of man is not pure; for the heart 
is the fountain from which flow the waters of 
life. We have never reached our best selves 
until the impulse at the heart is in harmony 
with God, when we do right not because we 
have to, to keep out of jail, but because we are 
impelled to by a divine compulsion within us. 
All highest effort comes from that divine com- 
pulsion. The great singers, the great painters, 
sing and paint because they can not help it. 
There is something within them that must find 
utterance. An Italian writer finely says of 
Columbus that "the instinct of the unknown 
continent burned within him." Cromwell was 
giving a page out of his own experience when 
he said, "That man goes farthest who does not 
know where he is going!" If we are to have 



MAN IN THE HEART 



197 



this inner compulsion that will drive us with 
full steam to the noblest thought and life, it 
must be because Jesus Christ reigns supreme in 
us, and our life is hid with him in God. Cherish 
Christ, make much of him, and he will make 
much of you. Give him the chief seat at the 
head of the table, and the life of heaven will 
already be known in your heart. John Wesley 
said: "Men talk much of happiness with God in 
heaven, but the idea of being happy with God 
on earth never enters their mind." But our 
only assurance of heaven hereafter is in the 
heaven begun within our hearts here. 

I must not close without a word of invitation 
to any one who has missed the greatest friend- 
ship of life and the greatest privilege of life 
through failing to know Jesus Christ as his 
Savior. I must again press home the most im- 
portant truth you can hear, that Christ is at 
hand, and that you may, if you will, welcome 
him here and now unto your comfort, your for- 
giveness, your eternal peace. Will you receive 
him? Charles Dickens was very fond of the 
figure, and uses it again and again in his books, 
dwelling upon the thought of the multitudes 
who are coming to meet us as we go on in life 



198 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



and the fact that we are traveling to meet 
them. We go forth alone, it may be, and we 
meet crowds of travelers. Most of them pass 
by unheeding and unheeded. Some linger for 
a little; they become our acquaintances, but 
they soon pass on. They leave little mark on 
our memory, and they may never come back. 
With some we may become associated in busi- 
ness or in other ways, but they do not knock at 
the doors of our heart, or, if they do, we do not 
give them entrance. There are a few perhaps 
to whom the door is open, whom we welcome 
into the inner sanctuary — not many, two or 
three or a dozen, or it may be twenty, and these 
dear souls make the great joy of our lives. 
Compared with these, all the rest sink away 
into nothing, and the great tragedy of life is 
when they leave us. But there is one who 
comes seeking us, knocks at the door of our 
hearts, cares for us, and, if we will open the 
door, will come in and dwell with us as our 
dearest Friend. Other friends may come and 
go, but he will abide with us forever. He will 
never leave us because we are sick or poor or 
in disgrace, but will stand by us and grow more 
precious and glorious as the years go on. Noth- 



MAN IN THE HEART 



199 



ing in life will mean so much to you as to open 
your heart and let in this great Lover and 
Friend who will fill your heart with sunshine 
and your life with his love and peace. Receive 
him to-day, and he will be with you not only in 
life, but when you set sail at the eventime he 
will stand by you and be your pilot into the 
eternal harbor. In that great hour of transi- 
tion you will be able to sing: 

"My bark is wafted on the strand 
By breath divine; 
And on the helm there rests a hand 
Other than mine. 

"One who was known in storms to sail 

I have on board; 
Above the roaring of the gale 
I hear my lord. 

"Safe to the land ! Safe to the land ! 

The end is this; 
And then with him go hand in hand 
Far into bliss." 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 

"Casting all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for 
you." — 1 Peter 5 : 7. 

THE quality as well as the quantity of life 
work depends so much upon doing it in a 
buoyant, hopeful spirit ; anything that makes 
us unhappy or disturbs our serenity and robs 
our hearts of courage becomes an exceedingly 
serious matter. Anxious care that chafes us 
and causes us to worry makes it impossible to 
do our work well. If the step drags and the 
arm hangs heavy and the eye lacks luster and 
the heart refuses to anticipate success, it is im- 
possible to do the best work. There is no joy- 
killer like anxiety; if it is possible for us to 
banish it, to rise above it, and to live hopefully 
and cheerfully and with strong confidence, 
there is nothing that is more worth while. We 
have a direct command here to cast our anxious 
care upon God, and the reason given us is that 
God cares for us enough to take it upon him- 

200 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 201 

self, and relieve us of it. The thing for us to 
do is to inquire how we may cast our anxiety 
upon God. 

I. First of all, it will appear eminently true 
on reflection that to escape anxiety by shifting 
it on to the divine shoulders can come only 
through making life large in our estimation of 
it, large enough to absolve us from the bond- 
age of little and petty things. Some people 
are willing to believe that life is going to grow 
into something large and fine, but the present 
is always petty and small, and so they are 
always unhappy. They are like the old man 
who put up several barrels of apples in the fall, 
and he said his wife carefully picked out every 
morning for use that day those that were be- 
ginning to rot, and so they ate rotten apples 
all winter. Some people eat rotten apples all 
their lives — anxious about to-day and expect- 
ing to be happy some other time. But happi- 
ness is like the manna that God gave the Jews. 
You can not hoard it up and keep it over to 
enjoy some other time. If you take it in a 
large, joyous spirit now, it is yours. But if you 
wait until to-morrow, it has spoiled on your 
hands. I never shall forget a call I once made 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



on an old soldier in Cleveland, Ohio, during 
his last illness. He was a rare, chivalrous man, 
who, forty years before, then in the prime of 
his life, went into the civil war and won his 
general's stars by heroic service. During all 
the years he had been a loyal soldier of Jesus 
Christ. On the occasion of my call he was 
more than eighty years young, his heart never 
happier, his face never more cheerful, nor his 
conversation more inspiring. And I remem- 
ber that, suddenly, as we talked, he burst out 
in a joyous tribute of praise to God for the 
wonderful blessings that had filled his life. He 
went back to his youth and began with thanks- 
giving for his parents, and their Christian 
teaching, and ran over his whole career. But 
the one thing that lingered in my memory and 
imprest me most of all was what he said 
about his children. He said, "The Lord gave 
me four beautiful children, and what joy and 
delight they were to me! True, they all died 
young, only one of them lived to be fifteen 
years of age, but I enjoyed every minute of 
them while they lived." That expression of 
thanksgiving and gladness, that he had en- 
joyed every moment of his children while 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 203 



they were alive, imprest me. What a great 
art it is to learn to enjoy the present and to 
get all the honey and gladness there is in it. 
Some people are always finding something to 
trouble them in the present, and are putting 
off the enjoyment of their parents or their chil- 
dren or their brothers and sisters or their 
friends until some other time. . But that is to 
lose the joy of life. It all leaks out day by 
day, and after a while, when you think the hour 
for enjoyment is come, the possibility is no 
longer with you. 

Jesus Christ had all the causes for anxiety 
that any of us can credit to ourselves. He had 
poverty, and false friends, and cruel enemies, 
and the certainty that his life was to end in 
shame and disgrace as far as the world was 
concerned. Yet he refused to allow any of 
these things to make him anxious and care- 
worn, and the greatest thing he could say to 
his friends who had been faithful to him was 
that he would leave his peace with them. Christ 
accomplished this because his life was so large 
and its horizon so great that he refused to allow 
small things or imaginary things to rob him of 
his courage or his peace. If you will think for 



204 THE WINDS OF GOD 

a moment, you will confess that the things 
which make you anxious and fill you with 
worry are petty things — not the big things, 
but the little things, or the things which never 
happen. 

There is the habit of brooding over supposed 
slights on the part of our friends. I have been 
astonished to see intelligent, well-meaning peo- 
ple keep themselves miserable a good part of 
the time by exaggerating some individual's ap- 
parent coldness or indifference toward them. 
The folly of this is apparent when we consider 
for a moment that it is nearly always ground- 
less. Who of us have so many friends that we 
would like to lose one? Nobody wants to drop 
an old friend, or even an interesting new ac- 
quaintance. But oftentimes people are ab- 
sorbed with other matters when they meet us, 
and because they pass us by with a hurried nod 
or a mere wave of the hand, it is folly for us to 
put the unkindest possible construction on their 
conduct. Why not put the generous construc- 
tion on it instead? For in ninety-nine cases 
out of a hundred the generous construction is 
warranted. 

Another fruitful source of misery is found 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 205 



in anxiety about health. If there is anything 
more foolish, I do not know it. Of course, we 
should take as good care of our health as we 
can. It has to do with the house in which we 
live. No man wants the roof to leak while he 
lives in the house, and the quality of our work 
is much modified by the character of the house 
in which we live. But you would think any 
man a fool who spent all his time doing noth- 
ing but take care of his house. So the man is 
foolish who spends all his time worrying over 
his body. It is only a temporary house at best, 
and if he keeps his peace with God he has a 
much better house waiting for him. So, while 
we should give a reasonable amount of care to 
the body, let us see to it that we do not permit 
rheumatism or distemper to get into the 
temper. 

Another sure way to keep yourself miser- 
able is to worry because you are not in posses- 
sion of more money. I believe in a reasonable 
amount of foresight — in a fair attention to in- 
surance, in laying up for a rainy day; but to 
worry and be anxious and imagine what would 
happen if the house burned up or the bank 
burst is the height of folly, rank lack of faith 



206 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



in God. It is folly because money is not the 
indispensable condition of happiness. I have 
seen many rich old people who were miserable, 
and I have seen many old people who were 
poor and yet full of an abiding joy and peace 
that the world could not take away from them. 

II. A sure cure for anxiety is to master our 
thoughts as Jesus did, center them upon high 
and bright and helpful things. If we do that, 
we shall be able to cast all anxious cares upon 
God. Paul has a wonderful recipe for freedom 
from anxious care which he sets out with great 
clearness in his letter to the Philippians. "Fi- 
nally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and 
if there be any praise, think on these things." 
And what shall be the result if one does that? 
Why, Paul says, "And the God of peace shall 
be with you." The man who follows Paul's 
injunction is an optimist, and the difference 
between that man and a pessimist is that the 
pessimist is all the time thinking about uncom- 
fortable things and things he wishes were dif- 



THE BANISHMENT OF AXXIETY 



201 



ferent but has no hope that they will be. Dr. 
Jowett says that such a man is as foolish and 
wrong-headed as the school-boy who refused 
to play during the recess hour. As this boy 
sat, with a discontented look, on a hard, stiff 
bench, a comrade said, "Why aren't you play- 
ing, Jack?" "Catch me playing," said Jack, 
with a frown, "if I played, then the recess 
would go too fast." 

There is no doubt that we may by determi- 
nation and by the help of God so master our 
thoughts that we shall be able to consider and 
rest upon the high and beautiful and noble 
and happy things of life. 

"Now tell me, throstle, pretty bird, 
Wherefore thy merry note 
I. too, would sing, but sudden cares 
And sorrow stop my throat. — 

"'I sing because I'm happy, Sir, 
And if it were not so, 
I'd sing to make me happy, Sir; 
And that is all I know/ — 

"Ah well, but if the lady-bird 

Who hears thy throbbing note, 
Were cold as winter, would thy song, 
Freeze not within thy throat? — 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"'I'd! sing and thaw her bosom, Sir, 
And if it were not so, 
I'd sing and thaw my sorrow, Sir; 
And that is all I know/ " 

Some people, and they are often the most 
genuine and devoted, rob themselves and oth- 
ers of the joy and strength they might have if 
they only understood the duty of being glad 
and cheerful. They feel so keenly the respon- 
sibility which rests upon them and so conscien- 
tiously try to bear all of the burdens of life 
that belong to them that they fail to take the 
joy God intends for them, and so miss much 
in power and usefulness. I have seen recently 
the story of a good woman, one of those lovely 
souls whom we call "saints on earth." Her 
whole life had been full of burden-bearing and 
helpfulness to all around her. When she came 
near to the end, one by one her friends were 
summoned to her bedside to receive her fare- 
well blessing, and they all felt as they left her 
that they had been on holy ground. 

One day her niece, who cared for her, said, 
"Oh, Aunt, what a wonderful thing it is that 
you can look back over your long life and find 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 209 

that there is absolutely nothing you have ever 
done that could cause you regret." 

The dear old lady smiled a little sadly, and 
said, "But there are things I regret." 

"You, Aunt!" cried her niece, incredulously. 
"What could you find to regret?" 

"I regret," she replied, "the good times I 
might have had and did not." And that was 
a true cause for regret. 

Many fail of the strength and courage to 
make life its best because through failure to 
master their thoughts they allow them to rest 
anxiously on the future and fear the goblin 
shapes that come up and leer at them out of the 
mystery of the days that are to come. What 
folly is that! When the future comes, if it 
does come, we shall need to be at our best ; to 
worry about it and lose sleep through our anxi- 
ety over it will only unfit us for the struggle 
when it comes. To do to-day's work as best we 
can, to accept to-day's blessings as the special 
gift of God, and rejoice in them as an omen 
and a token of the good things that are to 
come, fits us for to-morrow and the day after. 
Some poet has the right idea when he sings 



210 THE WINDS OF GOD 

"Sure, this world is full of trouble — 

I ain't said it ain't: 
Lord ! I've had enough, an' double, 

Reason for complaint. 
Rain an' storm have eome to fret me, 

Skies were often gray; 
Thorns an' brambles have beset me 

On the road — but say, 

Ain't it fine to-day! 

"What's the use of always weepin', 

Makin' trouble last? 
What's the use of always keepm* 

Thinkin' of the past? 
Each must have his tribulation, 

Water with his wine, 
Life, it ain't no celebration. 

Trouble? I've had mine — 

But to-day is fine ! 

"It's to-day that I am livin', 

Not a month ago; 
Havin', losin', takin', giving 

As time wills it so. 
Yesterday a cloud of sorrow 

Fell across the way; 
It may rain again to-morrow, 

It may rain — but, say, 
Ain't it fine to-day!" 

III. If we are to cast all our cares upon 
God and thus banish anxiety, we must per- 
fectly trust his love, his leadership, and his 
guidance. I have read that in the wilds of 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 211 



Africa they have found a vine on which grows 
a small berry, about the size of a cranberry, 
which has a peculiar effect, when eaten, of 
changing the taste so that all sour things seem 
sweet. After a few hours the taste becomes 
natural again, but during that time all acids 
are sweet to the taste. When the natives find 
this berry they eat some of them, and then fill 
themselves with the sourest fruits they can find, 
getting the same enjoyment as from the sweet- 
est and rarest and most delicious. 

Confidence in God and the assurance that he 
means the best for us causes us to make the 
best of everything, to look upon the bright side 
of things, and to ignore, when possible, dis- 
agreeable things. It is like that African taste 
berry and assures a sweet taste in the mouth all 
the while. The man who has the infinite God 
to rely on can afford cheerfulness. Dr. Joseph 
Parker was once at a club dinner where one of 
the speakers foolishly asserted that Christianity 
had done very little for mankind; that he, for 
his part, believed that gas had been a greater 
benefactor than Christianity. Hisses and 
cries of "shame" came from all over the house. 
But Dr. Parker, a guest of the evening, quietly 



212 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



arose and said, "Hush! Do not quarrel with 
our friend. He is simply stating his belief. 
Now I, when I am nearing my latter end, will 
call for the consolations of the Christian re- 
ligion. But our friend here, on his death-bed 
will call for the gas-man." Men who have no 
God may consistently have the blues and be 
eaten by anxiety; but we who have come to 
trust God and love him ought to rest our- 
selves in him. His fatherhood, his mother- 
hood, he has pledged to us in a thousand prom- 
ises, and he can not fail any heart that rests 
in his arms. 

"He shall give his angels charge 
Over thee in all thy ways. 
Though the thunders roam at large, 

Though the lightning round me plays, 
Like a child I lay my head 
In sweet sleep upon my bed. 

"Though the terror come so close, 

It shall have no power to smite 
It shall deepen my repose, 

Turn the darkness into light. 
Touch of angels' hands is sweet; 
Not ai stone shall hurt my feet. 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 213 

"All thy waves and billows go 
Over me to press me down 
Into arms so strong, I know 

They will never let me drown. 
Ah, my God, how good thy will ! 
I will nestle and be still 

But I can imagine some sincere and earnest 
listener, hedged about by some perplexing situ- 
ation, saying to me: "Yet how can I help 
being anxious when I see life passing and the 
thing that has seemed most important to me, 
to which my heart has gone out, and for which 
I have been led to pray to God through long 
months and years, is failing of achievement, 
and my prayers seem to be unanswered and 
my project doomed only to failure?" I would 
say to any such earnest soul that God deals 
with us as with children. We are his children, 
and if we are faithful to him and lovingly rest 
our will upon his will, he will in the best way, 
and with the noblest results, do the best thing 
that can be done for us, and for all those upon 
whom our hearts are set. It may not be in our 
way, but he who knows everything will do the 
best. I have read the story of a young woman, 
a sincere and beautiful woman, who had con- 
secrated herself to the work of Christian mis- 



211 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



sions and was to go out to India. But before 
she went, an accident disabled her mother, and 
the journey had to be postponed. For three 
years she ministered to her mother, until the 
mother died, leaving as her last request that 
before going to India, the daughter should go 
and visit her sick sister in the far West. She 
went, intending to sail for India immediately 
on her return; but she found the sister dying 
of a lingering illness and without proper atten- 
tion; and once more she waited until the end 
came. Again her face was turned eastward 
when the sister's husband suddenly died, and 
five orphan children, all of them young, had 
no soul on earth to care for them but herself. 
"No more projects for going to the heathen," 
she wrote to a friend, "this lonely household is 
my mission." She was greatly disappointed, 
but cheerfully submitted to the will of God 
and set herself with loving devotion to do a 
mother's service for those children. Fifteen 
years she devoted to them, and in her forty- 
fifth year God showed her the key to the mys- 
tery of her unanswered prayers, and revealed 
to her why he had held her back from India, 
as she laid her hand in blessing on the heads of 



THE BANISHMENT OF ANXIETY 915 

three of these j^oung people whom she had 
mothered, ere they sailed as missionaries to the 
land whither, twenty years before, she had pro- 
posed to go. Her broken plan had been re- 
placed by a larger and a better one. She could 
not go, but three went in her stead: a three 
hundred per cent interest for twenty years. 

Such revelations of God's guidance and 
leading — and the whole story of mankind is 
full of them — ought to teach us all to pray : 

"Teach me to feel that thou art always nigh; 

Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear, 
To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh; 
Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer." 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED 
SOUL 



"For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the 
world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus 
Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the 
last state is become worse with them than the first." — 2 
Peter 2 : 20. 

THIS theme has to deal with the sorrows 
of people who have known the better way 
and have strayed from it, people who have es- 
caped from the condemnation of their sins and 
have been made free from the bondage of sinful 
habit, and have again yielded to temptations 
that have brought them anew into the entangle- 
ments that come to every one who turns his 
face away from God and righteousness and is 
caught in the meshes of the evil net. The back- 
sliding Christian does not get his troubles in 
the Lord's service. It is when he deserts and 
turns from his duty that his danger and his 
difficulties come. The old shepherd who offered 
prayer in a Welsh revival meeting put it ex- 
actly right when he lamented his backslidings 

216 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 217 

in these words : "Lord, I got among the thorns 
and briars, and was scratched and torn and 
bleeding; but, Lord, it is only fair to say that 
it was not on thy ground ; I had wandered out 
of thy pasture." And there are many others 
whose scars were obtained in the devil's service, 
outside the field where duty called them. I 
have talked with a great many backsliders, and 
I have never found one yet that was not ready 
to admit that the true service of God was not 
at fault. All the trouble came from wander- 
ing away from God, and turning again to 
worldliness. 

I. Peter especially refers to certain tangles 
where the backsliding Christian is under pecu- 
liar temptation of being caught and destroyed. 
One of these is covetousness. A man who is 
determined to have a great deal of this world's 
goods at no matter what cost to his soul, or the 
souls of his fellow men, can not be a Christian. 
Jesus Christ recognized this very clear distinc- 
tion when he said, "Seek ye first the kingdom 
of God and his righteousness, and all these 
things shall be added unto you." By "these 
things" was meant clothing and food and the 
necessary measure of worldly success. But 



218 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the distinction had to he made definite. To be 
a Christian at all, God must be first. And 
Christ puts it still more clearly when he says in 
so many words, "Ye can not serve God and 
mammon." Mammon, there, stands for the 
world, for physical success of every type, and 
Jesus says if you are going to follow him, if 
you are going to be a Christian at all, mammon 
must take a back seat. God and Christ must 
be first and must have control. Watts, one of 
the greatest painters of the last century, had 
a great picture entitled "Mammon." It re- 
veals an immense figure clad in complete armor 
of gold. His visor is down so that he has not 
even eyes to see as he rides resistlessly forward 
on a fierce steed, carrying curses rather than 
blessings to those represented on the crowded 
canvas. Helpless before the feet of the ad- 
vancing steed lies "Love" dead amid the roses, 
for money often kills true affection, as many 
an unhappy marriage testifies. Close by lies 
a soldier, wounded and dying, whom a nurse 
seeks in vain to protect from those death- 
bringing hoofs — for war is Mammon's servant, 
and by its ruthless cruelty men have been killed 
in millions. Beside the way, sadly dejected, 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 219 

may be seen representatives of Music, Poetry, 
and Painting, all of which are counted nothing 
in comparison with money when Mammon 
rules the land. Behind the awful figure is Jus- 
tice, carrying scales, but alas! they are all 
awry, and bearing a sharp glittering sword 
which will strike recklessly, because the eyes 
of Justice are bandaged. And at the back of 
all these is Death. The picture is a startling 
reminder of the Scriptural declaration, that 
"the love of money is the root of all evil." 
When men get caught in the snarl of covetous- 
ness they will sacrifice the noblest part of their 
nature, harden themselves against appeals to 
their sympathy, spurn love and duty, and sell 
their very souls for gold. Perhaps more peo- 
ple in the church need to be on their guard and 
always watchful at this point than at any other. 
It is not only rich people who are covetous. 
Many people who are always poor still die 
spiritually of covetousness. Let us make God 
first in our worship and love and devotion, and 
then, whatever worldly goods we possess, we 
will possess them and they will not possess 
us — which is a very different thing. Some men 
own their business; other men are owned by 



220 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



their business, and they are only slaves. Peter 
is calling for Christians who shall keep them- 
selves clear of the net of covetousness and ac- 
cept with love and thanksgiving, as so many 
good gifts from God, all the blessings that come 
in the physical world. 

Peter uses Balaam as an illustration of a 
man who was a prophet of God, a man who 
had many good impulses and many good de- 
sires. He wanted to be a good man, and he 
hoped to die a good man. But he was covetous 
and had a great love for money; he wanted to 
be good and enjoy all the perquisites of good- 
ness and yet get a share in the wages of un- 
righteousness. There are many like him now — 
men who want to have the influence of the 
Church, who want to carry the good name of 
the Church, to have the help for their families 
which it will bring, who hope after the strug- 
gles of life are over to die good men ; yet they 
are trying to get money and success by meth- 
ods which they know will not stand the light 
of the Ten Commandments and will not bear 
the blazing light of the great white throne. 
They are like Balaam. They want to be nomi- 
nal Christians and, at least in the end, real 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 221 

Christians; as Balaam said, so say they: "Let 
me die the death of the righteous, and let my 
last end be like his." Yet like Balaam they are 
ready for any shady intrigue that will get them 
money by any method that will leave them out 
of the penitentiary. The Church of Jesus 
Christ to-day is not only not helped by these 
men but is tremendously handicapped by them. 
Many a man controls an official board and 
makes his pastor tremble with fear who im- 
agines that because he has a long bank account 
and puts a good deal of money into the Church 
treasury he therefore is necessary to the 
Church. In many places these men are the 
damnation of the Church and are doing infin- 
itely more harm than good ; if the Church could 
purge itself of them there would be such a re- 
vival and such a turning of the great masses of 
the toiling multitudes to Christ that the day of 
Pentecost would be eclipsed and forgotten as 
the golden age of Christianity. Now every in- 
dividual is in danger of the peculiar tempta- 
tions of his own time, and every one needs to be 
on guard not to allow this craze for worldly 
success and this confidence in worldly things 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



to take the place of God and Christ and the 
great spiritual realities in heart and life. 

II. Another net which Peter esteems to be 
peculiarly dangerous, even to those who have 
escaped the pollutions of the world, is the lust 
for uncleanness of life, the dangerous tempta- 
tions that come from the flesh. Observation 
and history show us that no purity, no inno- 
cence, no established character for goodness, 
render a man or woman immune from the com- 
mon temptations which belong to humanity. 
Adam and Eve were innocent, but they were 
tempted and yielded. Jesus Christ was in- 
finitely pure and innocent, and yet he was 
tempted with tremendous and real temptation, 
and overcame by the grace of God within him. 
David reveals one of the sweetest and purest 
young lives characterized in the Bible. Noth- 
ing could be finer than his boyhood as a shep- 
herd lad on the hills of Bethlehem. Nothing 
could be more heroic and splendid than his 
early life as a soldier. Nothing could be more 
devoted to God, more thoroughly faithful and 
true, than his life in the wilderness when he 
was in exile with a price on his head and suf- 
fered all manner of hardship and danger and 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 223 



trying experiences. But after a while, when 
he had been long king, had much wealth, and 
had become drunk with power, and all things 
went his way, luxury and riches and ease and 
indulgence weakened his moral fiber, blinded 
him to his obligation to God, his feet were 
caught in the net of uncleanness, and he sinned 
grievously against God. For a long time he 
seemed deaf to all warning and reproof. He 
sinned blindly and did not seem to suffer 
greatly from it. And then there came the day 
when God sent Nathan to him, and that brave 
man stood before the king and painted the pic- 
ture of another sinner who had sinned just as 
David sinned. And David, looking at him- 
self in the other man, was filled with wrath and 
indignation and declared that the sinning man 
should die. Then Nathan cried, "Thou art 
the man!" And in a moment David's heart 
was riven as by a lightning's flash, and his 
sinfulness and uncleanness was revealed to 
him, and the grievousness of his sin against 
God weighed upon his conscience until he 
wept and cried aloud, "I have sinned against 
the Lord" ; and because of his true repentance 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



God turned away his sin and cleansed his heart 
and gave him a new chance. 

Beware of the beginnings of evil. Beware 
of permitting in the imagination that which 
may grow into uncleanness which will destroy. 

Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman was in the offices of 
the Southern Pacific Railway in San Fran- 
cisco when the General Passenger Agent 
asked him if he had seen the big trees of Cali- 
fornia. He informed him that he had seen 
them as he looked from the car window the 
day before, and, smiling, the railroad man said, 
' 'Then you have not seen them, for they must 
be studied to be appreciated." Calling for his 
secretary, he stretched out before Dr. Chap- 
man a measuring line, and went on to tell him, 
"I have measured one of the big trees of Cali- 
fornia. Its circumference is 105 feet, its diam- 
eter 35 feet, and the height was so great that 
one would hesitate to suggest it to those who 
have never looked on such a forest." Then he 
said to Chapman, "How large would you 
think the seed of such a big tree might be?" 
And when he suggested that it ought to be of 
enormous size, the railroad man poured out 
in the palm of his hand a number of its little 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 225 



seeds, and they were smaller than a lettuce 
seed. So it is with the sin of uncleanness of 
soul. An evil imagination encouraged, an im- 
pure thought harbored, an unholy ambition 
controlling, and the work is begun, but the end 
no human tongue can describe. Keep mind 
and heart clean from impure thoughts. 

III. Then here is another group which 
seemed to Peter to be a group of evil things 
likely to tempt the Christian away from his 
safe path, such as self-will, and presumption, 
and lack of reverence. These things may seem 
very little at the start, but if allowed to con- 
tinue and grow they tangle the soul and it 
stumbles to destruction. The worst ruin and 
the largest death-roll in the history of Vesuvius, 
the great volcano of Italy which stands guard 
over the Bay of Naples, was not caused by 
the fiery lava in its rushing streams, but by 
the continual dropping, hour after hour, of a 
drifting rain of ashes from the crater. They 
darkened the air so that fleeing for safety was 
difficult; they broke down the roofs by their 
accumulated weight, and filled the houses; 
they choked the lungs ; they covered the fields ; 
killed all the crops; and left the land ruined 



226 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



for years. So in life it is not the sudden, tre- 
mendous sins that most ruin the soul. It is the 
insidious growth of selfishness and irreverence 
and carelessness that brings ruin upon so many 
Christian people. Henry Drummond says 
that the whole nature of man is built up of 
cells. One after another, good and bad, all 
things have become part of him. His sins 
have made sin a part of him. The unkind thing 
you say or do makes you an unkind character. 
That selfish thing you do makes you selfish, 
pure and holy and noble thoughts are expelled 
and you become an animal. Paul says. 
"Wretched man that I am! Who shall de- 
liver me from this dead body?" Chained as 
they were in those dark dungeons of the East., 
if one prisoner died he was left chained to the 
man next to him. ''This dead body" — it was 
sin. But we are making dead bodies with our 
own hands and lives, cell by cell we become 
dead. Sin is a part of one and the end of 
these things is death, and all of a sudden some 
morning we awake and say, "Wretched man 
that I am, who shall deliver me from this dead 
body?" 

There is a Northern legend, told in one of 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 027 



Hall Caine's books, of a man who thought he 
was pursued by a monster. His grain stacks 
were fired, his barns were unroofed, his cattle 
destroyed, his lands blasted, his first-born slain. 
So he lay in wait for the monster where he 
thought it lived in the chasms near his house, 
and in the darkness of night he saw it. With 
a cry he rushed upon it, and gripped it about 
the waist, and it turned upon him, and held 
him by the shoulder. Long he wrestled with 
it, reeling, staggering, falling and rising again ; 
but at length a flood of strength came to him, 
and he overthrew it, and stood over it, covering 
it, conquering it with its back against his thighs 
and his hands set hard at its throat. Then he 
drew his knife to kill it, and the moon shot 
through a break in the clouds, opening an alley 
of light about him, and he saw its face, and lo! 
the face of the monster was his own. Let us 
not fail of the great message. We need fear 
nothing but ourselves. No one can harm us 
but ourselves. But if we yield to selfishness 
and irreverence and covetousness and unclean- 
ness, we snail be changed into the incarnation 
of evil which will mean death in life. With 
what virile power Kipling sings : 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"And because we know we have breath in our mouth and 
think we have thought in our head, 
We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really 
dead. 

The lamp of our youth will be utterly out: but we shall 

subsist on the smell of it, 
And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck our 

gums and think well of it, 
Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, and that 

is the perfectest hell of it!" 

IV. I have no doubt that some of you who 
have been listening to me, conscious of tangled 
feet and loss of the bright hope and the joyous 
fellowship of the Christian life you once knew, 
are saying "I would I knew the way out of 
the tangle!" No doubt some are ready to say 
with the poet: 

"I wish that there were some wonderful place 

Called the Land of Beginning Again, 
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches 

And all of our poor, selfish grief 
Could be dropped, like a shabby old coat, at the door, 

And never put on again. 

"I wish we could come on it all unaware, 

Like the hunter that finds a lost trail; 
And I wish that the one whom our blindness had done 

The greatest injustice of all 
Could be at the gates, like an old friend that waits 

For the comrade he's gladdest to hail. 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 229 



"We would find all the things we intended to do, 

But forgot, and remembered — too late, 
Little praises unspoken, little promises broken, 

And all of the thousand and one 
Little duties neglected that might have perfected 

The day for one less fortunate. 

"It wouldn't be possible not to be kind 

In the Land of Beginning Again; 
And the ones we misjudged and the ones whom we grudged 

Their moments of victory here 
Would find in the grasp of our loving handclasp 

More than penitent lips could explain. 

"For what had been hardest we'd know had been best, 
And what had seemed loss would be gain, 

For there isn't a sting that will not take wing 
When we've faced it and laughed, it away; 

And I think that the laughter is most what we're after 
In the Land of Beginning Again. 

"So I wish that there were some wonderful place 

Called the Land of Beginning Again, 
Where all our mistakes and all our heartaches 

And all of our poor, selfish grief 
Could be dropped, like a shabby old coat, at the door, 
And never put on again." 

Thank God, there is a Land of Beginning 
Again. And it is here and now, not to-mor- 
row, not some other time, not some special 
time, but now. To-day is the day of salva- 
tion. If you will hear his voice, harden not 
your heart. 



£30 THE WINDS OF GOD 

V. But to the great mass of us the supreme 
question is, How may I keep from getting 
entangled again in the evil net of worldliness 
which is always being laid for my feet? And 
I think there can be only one answer to that, 
and that is, that man is safe who is earnestly 
engaged in doing his Master's will and fighting 
the good fight of the kingdom in fellowship 
with Jesus Christ. Paul says, "Walk in 
the spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts 
of the flesh." Have your hands full and 
your heart full of your duty to God and 
men, and you shall not only live blameless but 
you shall live helpful lives. We need fight- 
ing saints — saints that stir the world up and 
make it better. The trouble with many saints 
is that they are too goody-goody. A tele- 
gram was received by the English Government 
in London a while ago which read as follows: 
"A saint has appeared in the Valley of the 
Swats, but the police are after him." We need 
more saints that stir up a fight. The great 
saints of history, the men we laud and admire, 
about whom we write poems and paint pictures 
and mold statues, to whom we build monu- 
ments, made it very uncomfortable for 



TEE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 231 

many people while they were alive. They 
were fighters; saints, but fighters — men like 
Moses, who "slew the Egyptian" ; like Joshua, 
who "left not one of them alive" ; like Caleb, 
who, on his eighty-fifth birthday, begged for 
the town where the giants of Anak lived, so 
that he would have a good fight cleaning them 
out instead of a nice quiet section for his share ; 
men like Luther, who was always with his back 
to the wall in a fight ; like John Knox, who a 
wicked queen declared was worth more than an 
army of common men ; men like Abraham Lin- 
coln and Savonarola, and multitudes I might 
name, of whom the world was not worthy. 
Saints they were, God's men, who kept the air 
of the earth so cleansed that men could live 
in it and breathe in it, who lifted the world a 
little more into the sunlight of liberty and 
righteousness, and made humanity better. 
These are the sort of saints the world needs 
these da\^s. And theirs is the way to save your 
soul and keep yourself from being entangled. 
Put yourself into the thick of the fight for 
righteousness in your community and count 
yourself a soldier of Jesus Christ against every- 
thing he hates and in behalf of everything he 



232 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



loves. At one of the meetings of the American 
Board, Dr. A. J. Lyman of Brooklyn told 
how a little while before Henry Ward Beecher 
went away they were walking the street to- 
gether at night, and Beecher suddenly turned 
to Lyman and said: "Well, Lyman, I suppose 
they will lay me in Greenwood some of these 
days; but God knows I won't stay there." 
And Dr. Lyman says that he turned to 
Beecher and asked: "Where may we expect 
to find you, Mr. Beecher?" The great preacher 
threw back his head with a shake, like a lion 
tossing his mane, and exclaimed: "Where? 
Why, somewhere in the thick of things for my 
country and my Christ." If you want to live 
a pure life and a happy life and keep your soul 
free and unentangled, thrust yourself into the 
thick of things wherever duty calls you for 
faithful service. Jesus Christ who redeemed 
you is looking to you for service: 

"He is counting* on you! 
On a love that will share 
In his burden of prayer, 
For the souls he has bought 
With his life-blood, and sought 
Through his sorrow and pain 
To win "home" yet again. 



THE SORROWS OF A TANGLED SOUL 233 



He is counting on you; 
If you fail him — 
What then? 



"He is counting on you ! 
Oh, the wonder and grace 
To look Christ in the face 
And not be ashamed. 
For you gave what he claimed, 
And you laid down your all 
For his sake — at his call. 
He is counting on you; 
And you failed not. 
What then?" 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY 
OF GOD 



"For thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance 
into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus 
Christ."— 2 Peter 1 : 11. 

SOMETIMES in Great Britain, when it is 
desired to show the highest possible honor 
to a great man who has dared much and 
achieved largely for humanity, there is given 
what is considered one of the highest honors 
that can be bestowed among English-speaking 
peoples, and that is the freedom of the city of 
London. Only here and there one has been so 
honored, and always it has been some splendid 
personality who, because of noble traits of char- 
acter and wonderful achievement against odds, 
is deemed worthy by the common consent of 
the people to receive this rare recognition. I 
had that in mind when I chose my theme after 
studying the text. In the higher realm, the 
realm of the spirit, Peter sees and depicts the 
man who is worthy of the freedom of the in- 

2Si 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 235 

visible but eternal and imperishable city of 
God. In the paragraph of which the text is the 
climax Peter sets forth the kind of personality 
which insures so glorious an honor. It is a 
wonderful paragraph, worthy of being written 
on our minds and hearts forever: "Grace to 
you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge 
of God and of Jesus our Lord ; seeing that his 
divine power hath granted unto us all things 
that pertain unto life and godliness, through 
the knowledge of him that called us by his own 
glory and virtue; whereby he hath granted 
unto us his precious and exceeding great prom- 
ises; that through these ye may become par- 
takers of the divine nature, having escaped 
from the corruption that is in the world by lust. 
Yea, and for this very cause, adding on your 
part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue; 
and in your virtue knowledge; and in your 
knowledge self-control; and in your self-con- 
trol patience ; and in your patience godliness ; 
and in your godliness brotherly kindness ; and 
in your brotherly kindness love. For if these 
things are yours and abound, they make you to 
be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he that lack- 



236 



THE WIXDS OF GOD 



eth these things is blind, seeing only what is 
near, having forgotten the cleansing from his 
own sins. Wherefore, brethren, give the more 
diligence to make your calling and election 
sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never 
stumble; for thus shall be richly supplied unto 
you the entrance unto the eternal kingdom of 
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." In this 
wonderful paragraph we have Peter's inspired 
vision of how a poor, sinful man, without merit 
and without resources hi himself, comes by the 
grace of God through the forgiveness of his sin 
and the fellowship with his Savior to such a 
personality that he is not only fitted to dwell 
with the good, but is in the very nature of 
things given an abundant entrance, a glorious 
welcome, into the eternal kingdom where 
Christ is Lord over all. It may be that Peter 
had in his mind some final reference to heaven, 
but there is every indication that the primary 
reference is to the entrance into the invisible 
spiritual kingdom, both on earth and in 
heaven. For, as Maltbie Babcock has beauti- 
fully said, salvation is not putting a man into 
heaven, but putting heaven into a man. It is 
not putting a sinful man into a law-abiding 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 237 

community, but writing the law of God in his 
heart and mind. The real question is not, 
"What will he do under outward compulsion?" 
but, "What will he do by inward choice?" 
Salvation is not the change of circumstances, 
but that central change in us, that change of 
the heart, of its attitude, its intentions, its 
choices, that will make it the conqueror under 
all circumstances in the battles of life. 

After this introduction it seems to me it will 
be interesting and profitable to note some of 
the characteristics which Peter discerned in 
this triumphant personality who is given the 
freedom of the city of God in this world and 
in all worlds where God may lead him. For 
such a soul does not need to worry about 
heaven. He carries heaven with him. Milton 
makes Satan cry "I myself am hell, whither- 
soever I fly is hell," and old Father Taylor, of 
the Seamen's Bethel in Boston, when some- 
body exprest a doubt to him as to whether 
Emerson would reach heaven, declared in his 
vital way, "If Emerson goes to hell, he will 
change the climate and turn immigration that 
way." This was his picturesque way of say- 
ing that the good sage of Concord dwelt in 



238 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the kingdom of God and abode constantly in 
heaven. 

I. In Peter's vision the man who has the 
freedom of the heavenly city is first of all a 
man of faith. He is a man of the long vision 
who sees spiritual things. I have seen some- 
where the story of a literary woman who con- 
sulted an oculist concerning an ailment of her 
eyes. Upon examination the physician said, 
"Madam, your eyes are simply tired; you need 
to rest them." "But/' said she in reply, "this 
is impossible; my engagements are such that 
I must use them." After reflecting for a 
moment he asked, "Have you any wide views 
from your home?" "Oh, yes," she answered 
with enthusiasm; "from the front porch I can 
look out upon a glorious range of mountains." 
"Very well," replied the oculist; "that is just 
what you need. When your eyes feel tired, 
look steadily at your mountains for ten 
minutes — twenty would be better; the far look 
will rest your eyes." And it is the "far look" 
that is the remedy for weary hearts as well as 
tired eyes. David understood it when he said, 
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
whence cometh my help." The eye of faith 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 239 



looking on the high hills of God cools the fitful 
fever of worldliness ; if we would fit ourselves 
for abundant harmony in the spiritual king- 
dom, we must keep alive and buoyant the 
power of faith in our souls. Percy Ainsworth, 
the young Wesleyan genius, who went to 
heaven too early for the earth's needs, says 
that the Church has sometimes tried to impress 
the world by her material resources or by her 
political influence. She has competed with 
the financier and the diplomatist for the prize 
of power. And she has failed, as it was utterly 
right and inevitable that she should fail. She 
has been the home of learning, and the mother 
of the best civilization; but it is not even for 
these things that her children love her, nor is it 
for these things that the world at last will do 
her honor. Her real work to the world has 
always consisted in this, that she has kept the 
music of the pilgrim song ringing in men's 
hearts, making it impossible for them to settle 
down to the gain and comfort of the hour, 
easily forgetful of the venture of faith, the 
crusade of righteousness, and the pilgrimage 
of love. She has roused life's truest wander- 
thirst in a world too ready to be content with 



240 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the thing that is nearest, to take the obvious 
and immediate for its portion and its prize, 
and try to build a comfortable house when 
there is scarcely time to pitch a tent. Faith in 
God and in Christ, in immortality, in our own 
spiritual possibilities, keeps alive the adven- 
turous "wander- thirst" in our souls and makes 
us true crusaders for a better world and a 
nobler life among men. 

II. Peter teaches us that this man of faith 
must develop into a man of spiritual achieve- 
ment. You may find taught in these assur- 
ances that to the faith will be added virtue, 
and temperance or self-control, and patience, 
and knowledge or experience — qualities which 
taken together always mean achievement. 
That word "virtue," as Peter uses it, is a little 
different from its ordinary meaning of gen- 
eral excellence and goodness. The Latin word 
vir means a man or a hero ; and the Latin word 
virtus meant the special quality of man or 
hero. Virtue, to the Latins, meant, thus, the 
quality of manhood or heroism. Virtue and 
manliness were practically synonymous words. 
To be manly was to be virtuous ; to be virtuous 
was to be manly. So that, as Peter uses it, 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 241 

we may take it to mean efficiency. It is faith 
in energetic action. I think modern athletes 
have a little word that just expresses what 
Peter means by the word virtue, as he uses it 
here. It is a little word you will find on the 
sporting page of the newspaper, telling about 
track meets and athletic things generally — the 
little word "pep." I often hear young fellows 
talking about a man and saying he might do 
big things in athletics if only he had more 
"pep" in him, and again I hear them say he 
doesn't look as if he has the strength of the 
other man, but he has more "pep" than any 
fellow you ever saw, indicating that it was not 
so much the man's size or appearance as it was 
that quality of "pep" that made him success- 
ful and triumphant. Now Peter is saying to 
us that the man of faith must have added to it 
spiritual "pep," that will make him efficient 
and powerful to do things in the spiritual 
world. Robert W. Service sings in the style of 
Kipling a very picturesque and virile song en- 
titled, "The Law of the Yukon." 

"This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain ; 
'Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and 
your sane — 



242 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Strong for the red rage of battle ; sane, for I harry them 
sore; 

Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to 
the core; 

Swift as a panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat, 
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat, 
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen 
ones; 

Them witf I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons; 
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with 
my meat; 

BuiJ the others — the misfits, the failures — I trample under 
my feet/ 99 

Now the law of the spirit is like the law of 
the Yukon. If we are to win victories for God 
and to be worthy of abundant entrance into 
the spiritual kingdom, we must abound in this 
virile spiritual virtue. I have been reading 
recently a discussion on Spiritual Invalidism, 
by Ambrose Shepherd, in which he says some 
very interesting things, among others this: 

"All men who are responsible for their actions have some 
amount of mental life, but in one man it may scarcely 
amount to strength enough to appear as an intelligent 
animal, while in another it rises to genius and writes Hamlet 
or Paradise Lost." 

The same is true in physical life. You meet 
a man to-morrow morning, and the sight of 
him sends a rush of pity to your heart. He 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 243 



has just life enough to go as a mourner around 
the streets. Every effort with him is toil that 
tells, and as he looks in your face you drop 
your gaze ; it is like looking into the face of the 
dying. You meet another man, and if you 
are not very well in yourself, his buoyancy as 
he swings past you is almost oppressive, he 
seems so packed with vitality that his exuber- 
ance is positively irritating; everything about 
him seems a kind of unspoken challenge, "How 
I do enjoy life: Don't you?" Now, what is 
the difference between these two men? One 
man has life, just enough to keep him out of 
his coffin, but the other has it abundantly. Ex- 
actly so is it with this other and higher life of 
the spirit. The truth is, very few of us have 
up to our privilege this great strong thing 
which is above all else the insignia to the world 
of our fellowship with Christ. What we all, 
as Christian men and women, need is the life 
"more abundant," the fulness of the Spirit; 
we need the infusion of something which 
Henry Drummond was so fond of saying was 
unlike anything else in nature, that which con- 
stitutes the separate kingdom of Christ and 
gives to Christianity its strange and unique 



244 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



character. The anointing which the early 
Church had was in no sense of the word a nat- 
ural gift. Yet it was a gift which can be added 
to each of us, if, with surrender to God and 
complete wholeness of purpose, we give our- 
selves to his service. Jesus Christ came that we 
might have life and that we might have it more 
abundantly, and every one of us may have this 
virtue, these divine graces of self-control and 
patience and experience, that will crown us 
with spiritual achievement. 

III. Now Peter says that this man of faith 
who gives himself up to spiritual achievement 
should become a godly man by adding godli- 
ness to these things which he has. James 
Hastings, the great English scholar, thinks it 
is significant that Peter placed this character- 
istic of godliness so far along in his description 
of this triumphant Christian personality. He 
calls attention to the fact that in the beginnings 
of the Christian life men are almost sure to be 
prayerful, but that when they have reached 
somewhat of excellency, when their will is dis- 
ciplined and pure desires are theirs, when they 
are at home in the study of the gospels, when 
they are self-possest and patient, there is great 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 215 

danger of suffering from undevoutness. All 
their efforts are directed to self-culture and 
they cease to pray. They have acquired power 
over themselves and think less of God's help. 
From this come barrenness and weakness. 
Gradually a change is evident; their hearts 
grow hard, self -consciousness and pride de- 
stroy the sweetness of their life. For want of 
heavenly motive they are impatient ; for want 
of heavenly aim they are self-indulgent. And 
so we often see most excellent people under- 
going this sad and serious change. The want 
of godliness is fatal to spiritual advancement. 
It was observation of this sort of lack that led 
Robert Louis Stevenson to say about a man, 
"I will think more of his prayers when I see in 
him the spirit of praise." And again: "I don't 
call that by the name of religion which fills a 
man with the bile of bitterness." If with watch- 
ful hearts we hold ourselves to reverent and 
devout lives, sensitive to the presence of God 
and our need of him, prayer will be as immi- 
nent with us and as constant as conversation 
with our friends. If you want to see a good 
illustration of this, read those wonderful letters 
of Paul which are contained in the New Testa- 



246 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ment, and see the marvelous range of his 
prayers. He carried everything to God with 
perfect naturalness. If he wanted to reach a 
man and change his heart, he thought the 
quickest way to do it was to pray for him. I 
have seen somewhere the story of a man in a 
newspaper office in Fleet Street, London. He 
belonged to the Scotsman newspaper and the 
office in Fleet Street was connected with the 
central office in Edinburgh by private tele- 
phone. There were two men in the London 
office, and one was left in charge while the other 
went out to collect news from a news agency. 
When he came back, he found that he had left 
the key of the ground floor door in his over- 
coat pocket. He made a noise on the door, but, 
getting no response from the man six stories 
up, thought that he must have fallen asleep. 
He thought at first of going up the fire-escape, 
but found that was not practicable. So he 
went to a long-distance telephone office, and 
telephoned to Edinburgh, and asked them to 
wake up the man in the London office. The 
people in the Scotsman office in Edinburgh 
rang up, and the man in the office in London, 
said, "What is the matter?" The answer was, 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 247 

"So-and-so is down-stairs in Fleet Street; go 
down and let him in." So the quickest way 
into that office was around by Edinburgh. I 
remember something like that at the time of the 
great blizzard in 1888, when for a week many 
large business transactions were carried on be- 
tween New York and Boston by the round- 
about way of London and Halifax. And so 
it is true that often the quickest way to the 
hearts of the people walking by our side is by 
way of heaven. God help us that we may not 
fail of that loving reverence and profound ap- 
preciation that shall hallow our hearts and 
thoughts and lives with the grace of godliness. 

IV. This triumphant Christian manhood, 
according to Peter, will also have the grace of 
brotherly love. Of course this brotherly love 
is the very essence of Christianity. John Wat- 
son, or, as he was better known, "Ian Mac- 
laren," used to have the habit, whenever he 
had a holiday, of worshiping in some strange 
place, and often in some very small and humble 
chapel where he would be unknown. One day 
he went to a Wesleyan chapel where a lay 
preacher, an old farmer, occupied the pulpit, 
and he was greatly imprest with what the old 



248 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



man said at the close of his discourse. He said, 
"Why do I preach Sunday after Sunday? Be- 
cause I can not eat my bread alone." And Ian 
Maclaren said that he counted that one of the 
greatest conclusions to a sermon that he had 
ever heard — He could not eat his bit of bread 
alone. That is the true spirit of Christianity. 
Christ puts a tremendous emphasis on bro- 
therly love when he tells us that whatever we 
do of good or ill to our brother, he takes as 
tho we had treated him in the same way. 
Every bit of good we do to anybody we do to 
Jesus, and every bit of harm we do to anybody 
we do to Jesus. That was a tremendous thing 
that Rattenbury, the successor of Hugh Price 
Hughes, said, "If you betray a man, you are 
a Judas, even if the man be John Smith and 
not Jesus Christ of Nazareth." 

V. On one occasion when Colonel Roosevelt 
was leaving the platform where he had spoken 
to a great mass of people, a young man met 
him with a book and a fountain pen, and asked 
for the Colonel's autograph. Mr. Roosevelt 
begged to be excused and pushed toward the 
cloakroom. As he got into his overcoat there 
stood the young man again with book and pen, 



THE FREEDOM OF , THE CITY OF GOD 249 

begging the Colonel's signature. Seizing them 
both, the Ex-President started to write his 
name. The pen would not work, and dropping 
it, Roosevelt in characteristic style, exclaimed 
"Shucks: You have no ink in your pen." The 
young man lost the coveted autograph through 
lack of diligence in preparing for it. There 
is pathos and tragedy in that illustration when 
we lift it up to higher things. Men are failing 
to achieve for God because they go with slack 
hands and lack of diligence in the things that 
belong to the kingdom. Dr. Jowett speaks 
with great insight when he declares the need of 
method in our religion. We must find out the 
best means, he says, of kindling the spirit of 
praise and of engaging in quick and ceaseless 
communion with God. And then we must 
steadily adhere to these as a business man ad- 
heres to well-tested systems in commercial life. 
We must bring alertness into our religion. We 
must watch with all the keenness of an open- 
eyed speculator, and we must be intent upon 
"buying up every opportunity' ' for the Lord. 
We must bring promptness into our religion. 
When some fervent impulse is glowing in our 
spirits, we must not play with the treasured 



250 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



moment ; we must strike while the iron is hot, 
we must bring boldness into our religion. 
Timid men make no fine ventures. In the 
realm of religion it is he who ventures most who 
acquires most. We see this illustrated every- 
where. John Howard flings himself into the 
dark prisons of Europe in a cruel and blood- 
thirsty age, and works miracles of helpfulness. 
Maud Ballington Booth throws herself with 
absolute faith into the dark and wicked mass 
of men and women in our modern peniten- 
tiaries, trusting absolutely in the power of 
Jesus Christ to reach the most wicked and de- 
based human soul, and wins hundreds and 
thousands of convicts to the holy life. May 
we learn the great lesson: Let us give our- 
selves with all the diligence that is possible to 
us to being and doing the will of God that is 
within our reach. Throw yourself unreserv- 
edly into the heavenly current that sweeps you 
ever and ever toward goodness and heaven. 
Thousands of miles away from home, fifteen 
men once dropt over the side of a sinking ship 
into the life-boat. There was no time to gather 
up anything in the way of sails or other equip- 
ment for the little craft. Only a bit of food 



THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF GOD 251 

and water, and then out into the great deep. 
But those men never lost heart. They had 
taken their bearings well, and knew that they 
were launching their bark on the friendly 
bosom of the mighty equatorial current, and it 
would some day bring them home. And it did 
not disappoint them. 

My brother, my sister, give yourself unre- 
servedly to the current of Christian faith and 
service that sweeps away from worldliness and 
sin to God and Christ and heaven, and it will 
bring you home. You shall not creep into the 
harbor shipwrecked, but with flags flying, and 
bands playing, and the choruses of heaven 
ringing, you shall have an abundant entrance 
into the eternal kingdom of our Lord Jesus 
Christ. 



THE GROWIXG SOUL 



"Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior 
Jesus Christ; to him be the glory both now and forever." — 
2 Pet. 3 : 18. 

"Thank God, a man can grow! 
He is not bound 

With earthward gaze to creep along the ground : 
Though his beginnings be but poor and low. 
Thank God! a man can grow. 
The fire upon his altars may burn dim, 
The torch he lighted may in darkness fail — 
And nothing to rekindle it avail — 
But, high above his dull horizon's rim, 
Arcturus and the Pleiads beckon him!" 

rpHE teaching of this epistle of Peter is 
A that we must go either forward or back- 
ward; there is no such thing as standing still 
for Christian men and women, and Peter's 
final appeal is that we grow in the favor of God 
and Jesus Christ, becoming ever nobler and 
greater personalities. This privilege of growth 
is the greatest privilege of mankind. Paul in 
his letter to the Ephesians, fourth chapter and 
thirteenth verse, declares that it is our duty to 

252 



THE GROWING SOUL 



253 



grow till we become perfect or full grown in 
our manhood, and the writer of the epistle to 
the Hebrews, in the opening of the sixth chap- 
ter, urges that we go on until we have reached 
our "full growth." Growth, movement, ex- 
pansion, advancement, and progress are ours. 
It is a part of our inheritance. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes says: "And grow we must, even tho 
we outgrow all we love." And Horace Bush- 
nell once said: "If the stars did not move, they 
would rot in the sky." Xo man is hopeless so 
long as he has the zest of life, the appetite for 
better things which bears witness of the possi- 
bilities of growth. A good man who had a 
reputation of thanking God for everything 
slipt one day on his way home from market, 
and dropt some meat that he was carrying 
home for dinner. As he dropt it, some dogs 
pounced on it, and carried it off. A bystander 
sneeringly asked, "What is there to thank God 
for now?" The man of grateful habit an- 
swered, "Well, my dinner has gone, but thank 
God, I have my appetite yet." And that was 
a great thing to be thankful for. Appetite is 
one of the greatest blessings we can know. 
Mentally, it is curiosity of mind that drives 



254 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



after knowledge; physically, it is hunger for 
food; and spiritually, it is a zest to know God 
and his ways which evidences the possibility of 
a growing soul. Let us study some of the 
necessary conditions of spiritual growth. 

I. To grow in the favor of Christ we must 
be genuine — keep clean of all cant and preten- 
sion. A post may look very much like a tree 
newly planted, but the difference is that the 
tree has roots that put it in relation to the sur- 
rounding soil and it begins to grow, while the 
post begins to rot. Your man of cant and pre- 
tense and hypocrisy is a post ; he can not grow. 
If we are to grow spiritually we must be gen- 
uine, real, and sincere, honest with God and 
with our own souls. Dr. James L. Gordon 
says that religious cant is the first step toward 
the unreal which leads up to hypocrisy as a 
climax. Cant, according to the dictionary, is 
"A sing-song mode of speaking," "an affected 
religious phraseology," "whining pretensions 
to goodness." In plain words, cant is the care- 
y less use of words connected with religious and 
spiritual things. Frederick Douglass used to 
tell what a hard time he had to get churches 
in which to speak after he had escaped from 



THE GROWING SOUL 



255 



slavery and was going about agitating in be- 
half of the liberty of his race. He said that 
sometimes the church official appealed to would 
answer: "I don't know about this — I must ask 
the Lord. Let us pray." Douglass adds sug- 
gestively, "When they prayed with me, they 
never gave me the church." Sir John Haw- 
kins, with a cargo of slaves stolen from Africa, 
the landing of which on the Atlantic coast 
marks the beginning of the slave trade on this 
continent, exclaimed, after passing through a 
tempestuous storm at sea, "But God would not 
suffer his elect to perish." 

What cant ! But we do not have to go back 
so far to find it. At a Sunday morning ser- 
vice in a Xew York City church some weeks 
after a number of new families had united with 
the church, the pastor one Sunday morning re- 
quested the church members to call on these 
new families. In doing so he used the follow- 
ing suggestive language: "I ask this as a recog- 
nition of your relationship to the church; it 
does not in the least involve social recognition." 
How delicious ! What a chance for the grow- 
ing kingdom of God in that community S 

Nothing wins confidence so quick as a touch 



256 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of sincerity, John Stuart Mill once had it on 
his mind to say some very straight things to the 
workingmen of Great Britain, and he made 
the statement: "One-half of the workingmen 
of England are unreliable." Naturally the 
masses of working people were in arms against 
him. And when next he appeared in public, 
at a political meeting, it was a pandemonium of 
questions flung at him from every side: "Did 
you say it? Did you say it?" John Stuart 
Mill stept forward to the footlig T hts and ut- 
tered one sentence, as brief as it was positive: 
"I did." From that moment the workingmen 
of England believed in John Stuart Mill. He 
began to grow on them for they saw he was 
sincere. 

When the silver craze was at its height, and 
Theodore Roosevelt was a candidate for vice- 
president, he came onto the platform in Den- 
ver, Colorado, where nine-tenths of the audi- 
ence were opposed to him, and were wondering 
if he would dodge the issue. Roosevelt stept 
to the front of the platform, showed his his- 
toric teeth, and snapt out a single sentence 
like a bullet from a rifle, "I am for the gold 
standard." And the sincerity and bravery of 



THE GROWING SOUL 



251 



it were so splendid that they cheered him to 
the echo, 

There is a story of a slave who. on the auc- 
tioneer's block, was approached by a kind- 
hearted man who said to him: "If I buy you 
and take you to a beautiful home, will you be 
honest and truthful T The black boy an- 
swered: "I will be honest and truthful whether 
you buy me or not.'' 

The possibility of your growth in soul, in 
real personality, does not depend upon your 
age, or your wealth, or your culture, or upon 
your past experiences, but above everything 
else it depends upon your genuineness. It 
depends upon the sincerity with which you now 
renounce your sins and open your heart to the 
incoming of the truth of God. and the whole- 
heartedness with which you surrender yourself 
to the fellowship and service of Jesus Christ. 
If you are to grow into the great personality 
that God sees is possible for you, you must run 
the roots of sincerity down into the soil of 
Christian fellowship. The universal source of 
goodness is the open secret of the world. To 
tap it one needs only to be honest and sincere. 
I have read somewhere that the sub-soil of Lon- 



258 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



don is such that it matters not where you sink 
a shaft, you will come upon a fresh, strong sup- 
ply of pure, clean water. Sink your shaft amid 
the palaces of Belgravia and the pent-up 
stream will leap to your call; sink it in the 
Whitechapel slum district, and the result will 
be just the same. And so you may take the 
strongest, noblest, most cultivated man you 
know, the man that is most Christlike of all 
your acquaintances, and if you search out the 
secret of his life you will find that he draws the 
streams of his goodness and power from the 
love of God in Jesus Christ. You may go out 
into any penitentiary or into any group of 
wicked men and women among the underworld 
of some great modern Babylon, there you may 
pick out the wickedest man you know, let him 
get a glimpse of the possibility of the forgive- 
ness of his sins and the divine help in Jesus 
Christ, let him begin to live straight and true 
in that new faith, and you will find that he is 
drawing all the streams of influence for this 
new goodness from the same source as the man 
who seems to you to be a saint of God. So the 
open secret of the growing soul is in the roots 
of sincerity and honesty that run down into and 



THE GROWING SOUL 



tap the fountains of divine love in Jesus Christ. 

II. To grow in the favor of God as Chris- 
tians we must enter into the service of human- 
ity. The law of Christ is the law of service. 
He came not to be ministered unto, but to min- 
ister. Some one sings : 

"I helped my weaker brother. Now the heights ; 

Oh guide me, Angel, guide! 

The Presence at my side 
With radiant face, said, 'Look, where are we now V 
And lo ! we stood upon the mountain's brow— 

The heights, the shining heights!" 

There is a very interesting book by Frederick 
Charrington, entitled, The Great Acceptance, 
written many years ago when the author was a 
young man just out of college. He had been 
traveling on the Continent before settling down 
to a life among the richest circles of London. 
His father was a wealthy brewer, and the 
young man himself was the heir to millions of 
pounds. His people were members of the 
Church of England, but without conscience 
upon the subject of the brewing interest from 
which they drew their wealth. During his 
travels young Charrington fell in with a very 
earnest Christian young man, was happily con- 



260 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



verted, and became consciously a child of God 
and a friend and brother of Jesus Christ. He 
went back to London and soon after, passing 
one night a miserable little public house, he 
saw a poor woman, with two or three children 
dragging at her skirts, go up to the swing- 
doors. He stopt and heard her call to her hus- 
band inside, "Oh, Tom, do give me some 
money, the children are crying for bread." The 
man came out, looked at her for a moment, and 
then knocked her down into the gutter. Just 
then the young man looked up, and saw his own 
name, Charrington, in huge gilt letters, on 
the top of the little public house. It suddenly 
flashed into his mind that that was only one 
case of dreadful misery and fiendish brutality 
in one of the several hundred public houses 
that his family possest. He realized in a flash 
the appalling, the crushing, the incalculable 
amount of wretchedness and degradation 
caused by that business. Writing about it he 
says : 

"Then and there, without any hesitation, I said to my- 
self — in reference to the sodden brute who had knocked his 
wife into the gutter — 'Well, you have knocked your wife 
down, and with the same blow you have knocked me out of 



THE GROWING SOUL 



261 



the brewery business.' I knew that I could never bear 
the awful responsibility of so much guilt upon my soul, I 
could not possibly allow myself to be a contributory cause ; 
and I determined that whatever the result, I would never 
enter the brewery again.*' 

He went straight to his father, and an- 
nounced his intention of surrendering all 
share in the brewery And he gave up that 
great fortune for conscience's sake, and made 
it possible for himself to grow in the grace of 
Christ. For forty years God has wonderfully 
blest him in that metropolis of the world in 
serving humanity and in going about doing 
good as a representative of Jesus Christ. He 
has never sought for praise nor for fame, and 
is far less known to the world-wide public than 
many who are not worthy to be named with 
him. We do not, all of us, have a chance at a 
wide canvas on which to paint our pictures of 
sacrifice and courage, but the quality of life 
does not depend upon its quantity. The same 
law holds for every one of us — to grow in favor 
with Jesus Christ we must serve, our com- 
munity and our time. 

III. The soul that is growing after the 
Christian type of growth must be always strug- 



262 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



gling after the best, and must be always prac- 
tising the best that it knows. Christian civili- 
zation points upward. Matthew Arnold has 
a poem entitled "Revolutions," in which he 
says:" 

"Before man parted for this earthly strand, 
While yet upon the verge of heaven he stood, 
God put a heap of letters in his hand 
And bade him make with them what word he could. 

"And man has turned them many times; made Greece, 
Rome, England, France — yes, nor in vain essayed 
Way after way, changes that never cease ! 

The letters have combined, something was made. 

"But ah! an inextinguishable sense 

Haunts him that he has not made what he should — 
That he has still, though old, to recommence, 
Since he has not yet found the word God would. 

"And empire after empire at their height 

Of sway, have felt this boding sense come on, 
Have felt their huge frames not constructed right, 
And drooped and slowly died upon the throne. 

"One day, thou sayest, there will at last appear 
The word, the order, which God means should be. 
Ah! we shall know that well, when it comes near; 
The band will quit man's heart — he will breathe free." 



And what is true of the growth of the race is 
true of the individual. The way upward 



THE GROWING SOUL 



263 



toward full growth in manhood and woman- 
hood must come through the practise of the 
best within our reach, 

A w r hile ago on a university platform the 
president of the university arose to introduce 
a man whose investigations and achievements 
had attracted the attention of scientific men in 
all nations and added greatly to the fame and 
material wealth of the great State of Cali- 
fornia. Mr. Luther Burbank, who was now 
to address the audience, was a modest man, and 
it was with some difficulty that he had been 
persuaded to deliver the address. But his re- 
luctance had yielded to their importunity, and 
the president said that Mr. Burbank would 
now tell them how he produced that wonder 
of the botanical world, the spineless cactus. 
Mr. Burbank arose amid applause, and in a 
gentle hesitating voice, said, ' 'Well, I found a 
cactus one day with fewer spines than common, 
and it occurred to me that it might be possible 
to propagate a variety of cactus with no spines ; 
and so I took it, and cultivated it with refer- 
ence to producing a spineless cactus, until that 
was the result." 

That was about all Mr. Burbank could tell 



264 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



about it. He related his experience, and came 
to the end of the story. 

4 'But, Mr. Burbank," said the president, 
"possibly you could tell us a little more in de- 
tail." 

"I do not know that any further details occur 
to me that would be of interest." 

4 'Well, Mr. Burbank, will you tell us how 
you produced the Shasta daisy?" 

"I found a daisy with a blossom somewhat 
larger than those of other daisies, and it oc- 
cured to me that I might possibly be able to 
produce one still larger. So I took pollen from 
another large daisy and cross-fertilized, and 
continued to do so for several seasons, always 
selecting the largest blossoms, and cross-fer- 
tilizing with other large blossoms. That is all." 

It is all very simple, is it not? The spineless 
cactus was his ideal, and so he worked with the 
best he had until he got it. The largest daisy 
possible was his ideal, and so he worked with 
the largest he could find until he reached the 
full growth of its possibilities. So we have set 
bef ore us the glorified manhood of Jesus Christ 
and the inspiration is given us to become like 
him ; then we have the assurance that if we let 



THE GROWING SOUL 



265 



this hope possess our hearts and struggle to 
attain it, we shall slough off one by one our 
spines until they are all gone ; little by little the 
beauty of our life's blossoms shall increase until 
the fragrance and glory of him who is the Rose 
of Sharon shall be our own. 

And yet the -holiest man that ever lived will 
at the climax of his growth in the likeness of 
Jesus Christ feel himself to be unworthy, will 
know that by his works he shall not be justified, 
that only in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus 
will there be hope of glorious fellowship with 
Christ at last. A great and good man who 
was noted for his Christlike spirit dreamed that 
he had died and stood at the gate of heaven, 
knocking for admittance. He gave his name, 
only to be told that his name did not appear 
upon the books. At last, after earnest en- 
treaty, he was bidden to enter, and was told he 
would have the privilege of appearing before 
the Judge of all the earth, and if he could 
stand the test he might abide in heaven forever. 

Standing before the Judge, he gave his 
name, and the following questions were put to 
him: 



266 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"Have you always led a righteous life?" 
And he said "No." 

"Have you always been kind and gentle?" 

Again he replied in the negative. 

"Have you always been forgiving to those 
that have been around you?" 

"Alas! no; I have miserably failed here." 

"Have you always been honest and just?" 

And he answered, "I fear not." 

As question after question was put to him 
by the Judge, his case seemed more and more 
hopeless. The last question was asked him, and 
to that, too, he was obliged to give the same 
negative reply. Just when he seemed to be in 
despair, the brightness about the throne became 
brighter, and suddenly he heard a beautiful 
voice, the most beautiful to which his ears had 
ever listened, sweeter than that of a mother; 
it was more beautiful than all the music of 
heaven ; it filled all the arches of the skies, and 
thrilled the soul of this man as he stood before 
the Judge, trembling and about to fall. The 
speaker said, "My Father, I know this man. 
It is true that he is weak in many ways, but he 
stood for me in the world, and confest me 
before men, and I take his place before thee." 



THE GROWING SOUL 



267 



Just as the last words of this sentence were 
spoken, the dream was over and the man awoke. 
But he had his lesson, and it is a lesson for us 
all. Let us pray God that we may have the 
humility and the devotion and the courage that 
will enable us to grow to the last possibility 
of usefulness and beauty of character, but let 
us never forget that even then we have in our- 
selves no standing before God. Our standing 
must be in Jesus Christ. To him be glory now 
and forever. Let us ask ourselves the question 
whether we are so living in friendship with him 
that in the great day when we shall stand be- 
fore the throne and see him as he is, we shall be 
like him, and shall be owned of him. 

"Shall we know him if we see him 

When he comes? 
Shall we fear him, shall we ftee him 

When he comes ? 
Shall we love him and believe him, 
Will his own at last receive him-, 
Or will slighting" coldness grieve him 

When he comes 1 ? 

"Shall we dare to stand before him 
When he comes? 
Shall we worship and adore him 
When he comes*? 



268 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Or will pride presume to try, him, 
Will our craven fear deny him, 
And our sins ery ' Crucify him/ 
"When he comes! 

"May our feet be swift to meet him 

When he comes! 
May our hearts leap up to greet him 

When he comes! 
May our lips be fit to sing him, 
May our hands be clean to bring him 
All we have and all to crown him 

When he comes !" 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

IN the year 1809 there was born into the 
world a group of men whose usefulness and 
worthy fame could not probably be matched by 
any other year in the century. It was a year 
which gave to poetry the erratic but extraor- 
dinarily brilliant author of "The Raven," 
Edgar Allan Poe; the witty and genial "Auto- 
crat of the Breakfast Table," Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, and that peerless English singer, 
Alfred Tennyson. It gave to music men like 
Chopin, and Mendelssohn with his oratorios 
of St. Paul and Elijah. The same year gave 
to science the monumental figure of Charles 
Darwin, and to English politics and world- 
wide civilization the not less splendid figure of 
William Ewart Gladstone. It was also the 
birth year of Samuel Francis Smith who wrote 
our national hymn "My Country, 'tis of thee." 
But that which makes the year 1809 forever 
memorable in America is the fact that on the 

269 



270 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



twelfth day of February of that year there was 
born into the world that unique and marvelous 
man who has no parallel personality in the 
history of mankind, Abraham Lincoln. 

Before entering upon a brief study of some 
of the characteristics of the life of one who cer- 
tainly, after Washington, is the first American, 
I wish to lay the emphasis on that fact that 
Lincoln is unique, a providential man, a man 
who seems to have been raised up out of un- 
usual conditions to the unusual place which he 
occupies in history. James Russell Lowell in 
his great Commemoration Ode brings this out 
with graphic clearness. He sings: 

"Nature, they say, doth dote, 
And can not make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan, 
Repeating us by rote: 
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, 
And, choosing' sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted "West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



271 



And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 

They knew that outward grace is dust; 
They could not choose but trust 

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
And supple-tempered will 

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 
Thrusting- to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 

Yet also high to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 

* * * * 

Here was a type of the true elder race. 

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face. 

* * * * 

He knew to abide his time, 

And can his fame abide, 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 

Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and drums, 

Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes; 

These all are gone, and, standing like a tower, 
Our children shall behold his fame, 

The kindly, earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 

New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

I. Abraham Lincoln was great in his un- 
selfishness. It is remarkable that a man could 
be so human as Lincoln and yet so absolutely 
unselfish. In this Lincoln stands out almost 
unique among the greatest men in history. 



272 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



John Milton declares ambition "the last infirm- 
ity of noble minds," and Milton ought to 
know, for he was tremendously ambitious. 
Selfishness implies a very subtle and abiding 
love of self, and some of the greatest human 
characters have been marred by this weakness. 
Only one president before Abraham Lincoln 
seems to have been almost clear of it. Jeffer- 
son, Adams, Jackson, and many other great 
characters in our history never lost sight of 
their personal relation to the country, and al- 
ways felt that they themselves were essential to 
the success of the cause in hand. Their per- 
sonality they took quite as seriously as the 
character of the nation. But we have had two 
men, George Washington and Abraham Lin- 
coln, whose attitude toward the country and its 
great problems were entirely different from 
this. They held themselves to be only minis- 
ters, only servants of the people and of their 
time. They were blown onward to their work 
by the breath of God. They were the willing 
servants of Providence, but felt themselves to 
be only servants. They never felt themselves 
necessary to the success of righteousness. Nei- 
ther of them felt that they were personally 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



273 



great men. They were humble in their esti- 
mate of themselves as compared with others 
in their own time. No man had truer humility 
than Abraham Lincoln. There was not much 
in him of that creative quality of mind which 
was so plainly marked in Wendell Phillips, 
Edward Everett, Charles Sumner, or Henry 
Ward Beecher. They felt that they must 
speak out the message throbbing in their hearts 
or die. Lincoln was of different quality. He 
listened attentively to the great ground-swell 
of thought and feeling that came up from the 
minds and hearts of the people, and when at 
last he spoke, his voice was the voice of the 
millions. He was acting not for himself but 
for them. Some people thought him slow, he 
was slow, as slow as Moses; but he was also 
as unselfish and as sure as Moses. 

II. Lincoln was great in his integrity. This 
seems to have been a part of his inheritance. 
From his very birth he seems to have been 
a personality singularly sincere. His mind and 
heart were transparent, utterly without guile. 
Nobody seems ever to have known Lincoln at 
any period of his life who did not trust him. 
When he was in his first year of law practise, 



274 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



and was seedy and poor, not owning half a 
thousand dollars' worth of property in all his 
worldly possessions, a client came to him one 
day in a case relating to a certain land claim, 
and Lincoln said to him, "Your first step must 
be to take thirty thousand dollars and go and 
make a legal tender. It of course will be re- 
fused, but it is a necessary step." "But," said 
the man, in amazement, "I haven't the thirty 
thousand dollars to make it with." "Oh, that's 
it; just step over to the bank with me, and 
I'll get it." So into the bank they went, 
and Lincoln said to the cashier, "We just 
want to take thirty thousand dollars with which 
to make a legal tender; I'll bring it back in an 
hour or two." The cashier handed across the 
money to "Honest Abe," and without a scratch 
of the pen in acknowledgment, he strode his 
way with the money, all in the most sacred 
simplicity, made the tender, and brought it 
back with as much nonchalance as if he had 
been borrowing a silver spoon of his grand- - 
mother. That was the kind of man Abraham 
Lincoln was all his life long. His integrity 
was like a mirror, always shining clear. It was 
the backbone that not only held him steady 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



275 



but also held America steady through the ter- 
rible years of war. It was a bulwark to Ameri- 
can credit. It was a tower in which the people 
trusted. Thousands of millions of dollars 
passed under his hand, but no itching palm 
caught the least soiled fragment of the tini- 
est currency. Faith in his rectitude, his in- 
tegrity, was unbounded. The meanest, most 
venomous shaft never dared even fly at that 
mark. Lincoln's bitterest foes were ever will- 
ing to admit that he was invulnerable on the 
side of his integrity. 

III. Lincoln was great as an orator and a 
statesman. Douglass declared that Lincoln 
was the greatest debater he ever met in or out 
of Congress. We might rest Lincoln's fame 
as an orator, without question, entirely on the 
Gettysburg Address. At the time of its de- 
livery the immense audience had greatly ad- 
mired Edward Everett's long and eloquent 
oration. But at Abraham Lincoln's words 
they sobbed and wept. When Mr. Lincoln 
had ended, he turned and congratulated Mr. 
Everett on his splendid address. Everett re- 
plied with a truthful and real compliment, 
"Ah, Mr. Lincoln, how gladly I would ex- 



276 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



change all my hundred pages, to have been 
the author of your twenty lines !" And well 
he might, for those twenty lines will last as 
long as free government endures in the world. 
No other man of his time made a speech equal 
to it. Neither Gladstone nor Beaconsfleld nor 
Bismarck, nor any other contemporary of Lin- 
coln's at home or abroad, has left behind him 
anything in the same exalted class of oratory. 

Lincoln was not only an orator, but he was 
a statesman. When Lincoln came to the presi- 
dency the eyes of princes, nobles, aristocrats, 
of dukes, earls, scholars, statesmen, warriors, 
all turned on the plain backwoodsman, with his 
simple common sense, his imperturbable sim- 
plicity, his determined self-reliance, his incor- 
ruptible honesty, as he sat amid the war of 
conflicting elements, with unpretending stead- 
iness, striving to guide the national ship 
through a channel at whose perils the world's 
old statesmen stood aghast. The brilliant 
courts of Europe leveled their opera glasses 
at the strange figure. Fair ladies saw that he 
had horny hands and disdained white gloves; 
dapper diplomats were shocked at his homely 
manners; but old statesmen, who knew the 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



217 



terrors of the channel through which he was 
passing, were wiser than the court ladies and 
the dandy politicians and watched him with 
anxious curiosity. 

For a time Lincoln was the butt of the 
world's ridicule, but all that changed as the 
years went on. When Lincoln was dead at the 
hand of an assassin, one of the most beautiful 
tributes was the generous memorial of the 
London Punch. That paper had joined all 
the fashionable world in making merry at Lin- 
coln's expense while he struggled through the 
dark years of war. But generous indeed was 
its apology. I quote only a few verses of the 
splendid poem in which it summed up its esti- 
mate of Lincoln's character: 

'"You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier; 
You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face. 

"'His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, 
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
His lack of all we prize as debonair, 

Of power or will to shine, of art to please ! 

"'You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, 
Judging each step, as though the way were plain : 
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, 
Of chief 's perplexity, or people's pain ! 



278 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"'Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew, 
Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
Say, scurril- jester, is there room for you?' 

"'Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer — 
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen — 
To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.' " 

IV. Lincoln was great in his sense of humor 
and the genial playfulness of his nature. This 
has been a characteristic of the greatest minds 
throughout all time. Napoleon, Luther, Soc- 
rates, Cicero, Caesar, Wesley, Franklin, Web- 
ster, and multitudes of other great minds were 
noted for this playfulness of nature that no 
stress of circumstance nor weight of age could 
overcome. A jest-book written by Cicero was 
current in Rome ages after his death. Caesar 
and Napoleon made bon-mots as brilliant as 
their battles. Gilbert Haven, who knew Lin- 
coln well and loved him much, said that he 
was as sportful as a lamb. He liked a good 
story better than a great honor. A merry 
twinkle ever sat in his eyes. Even when sad- 
dest with sorrow, a ray of this sunlight of 
humor played on their salt drops. Next to 
Benjamin Franklin, if next, he was the most 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



2T9 



famous jester in America. Each of these men 
ever used a witty story to point an argument ; 
and both of them made the country laugh in 
dark hours with a laughter that did good like 
a medicine. 

This humor and playfulness of Lincoln was 
not unmanliness. It gave relief to an intensely 
overburdened nature — the dimples of child- 
hood dancing on the cheek of age, the reminis- 
cence of the past and the prophecy of the 
future, that kept his heart fresh amid the fur- 
nace of fire, heated seven times hotter than 
ever before, where he was called of God to 
walk. It was an important element in his 
career. Without it, neither he nor the people 
could have walked erect. Bishop Haven said: 

"Those mirthful, melancholic stories creeping out on the 
top of great disasters, like light playing upon graves, re- 
lieved the people in their terrific gloom. Not that he did not 
weep. No President ever wept so much. Not that he did not 
soberly gird himself to his fearful responsibilities. None 
ever wrought so patiently and persistently. But by a 
pleasantry he lightened his and our bursting hearts, that 
would otherwise have sunk like lead in the mighty waters." 

V. And now we come to the greatest of all 
the characteristics of Abraham Lincoln — his 
love. As Gilbert Haven well says, it is pos- 



280 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



sible for a man to be great in ability, in learn- 
ing, in service, and yet not be greatly loved. 
Franklin was as mirthful as Lincoln, Wash- 
ington was probably as unselfish, and certainly 
as incorruptible. Adams was far more learned, 
and probably as just, yet for none of them did 
the people, the great common people, pour out 
such floods of tears from hearts breaking be- 
cause they loved him. And if without irrev- 
erence we may use Paul's words about Christ 
in his relation to humanity, we may say as 
truthfully about Lincoln, and the love of the 
American people for him, "We loved him be- 
cause he first loved us." He is the one presi- 
dent of the United States, in all that line of 
great men, who seems to have carried in his 
warmest heart the heart of all the people. 

Some one says it is not his mother's knowl- 
edge of what is best for him, nor her lightsome 
nature, not her unceasing faithfulness, that 
makes the sick child commit himself so confi- 
dently to her arms. It is her love that makes 
him trustful. Her judgment may err, strength 
may yield, joy may flee; but love never fail- 
eth. It was this that made the people rest in 
Lincoln's loving arms in the darkest days of 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



281 



the Republic. I doubt if we can find in history 
such love on the part of a ruler for his people. 
Cromwell loved his peculiar type of religion 
first; Wellington, duty; England was the 
second in their hearts ; her people, last. Napo- 
leon loved himself, not France ; Caesar, power, 
not Rome; Washington loved the country 
more than its people. All the great leaders 
of the Revolution, all the great leaders that 
have appeared since, in reformatory, civil, or 
military life, have been devoted first to the idea 
that controlled them; one to liberty, another 
to union; one to America's glory, another to 
her destiny; one to philanthropy, another to 
piety; one to justice, another to honor; one 
to empire, another to prosperity. Find me 
one, if you can, outside of Abraham Lincoln, 
who can be said in a peculiar, profound, and 
personal sense to have loved the American 
people. All of these truly great men have 
loved the nation. But Abraham Lincoln held 
every citizen in his heart of hearts; he felt a 
deep and individual regard for each and all; 
he wept over the nation's dead boys at Gettys- 
burg as heartily as over his own dead boy at 
Washington. Their death, more than his own 



282 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



child's, was the means of bringing him into a 
personal acquaintance and fellowship with 
Jesus Christ. That sorrow wrought in him a 
godly sorrow which has become a joy forever. 

Without irreverence one may truly say that 
Abraham Lincoln in his love was a godly man. 
He cared for individual sorrows as God does. 
His doorkeeper had standing orders never to 
delay from one day to another any message 
asking for the saving of life. He heard a 
child cry in his ante-room one day, and calling 
his usher, had the woman that carried the child 
shown in. She had been waiting three days, by 
some mischance. Her husband was to be shot. 
She stated her case; the pardon was at once 
granted ; she came out of the office praying and 
weeping ; and the old usher, touching her shawl, 
told her who had really saved her husband's 
life. "Madam," said he, "the baby did it." 

One of his generals once urgently remon- 
strated with him for his pardons, declaring that 
it seriously weakened the army. But with eyes 
full of tears Lincoln answered: "Mr. General, 
there are already too many weeping widows in 
the United States. For God's sake don't ask 
me to add to the number, for I won't do it." 



ABRAHAM LIXCOLX 



Many people thought that this extreme kind- 
ness and love weakened the cause, but looking 
back on it after a generation, we may doubt 
that very much. Through it the people knew 
that there was a heart hi the White House with 
a tenderness like to that of the heavenly Father. 
What power there was in that who shall tell! 

And so this great apostle of love among 
American leaders and statesmen carried the 
nation's burdens safely through the storms of 
war into the harbor of peace. Without re- 
venge, without malice, without hardness or bit- 
terness of heart, he held loyal and disloyal, 
slave and master, black and white, Union sol- 
dier and Rebel leader in his great love. Had 
his dying lips been allowed to utter one sen- 
tence, I do not doubt it would have been to 
quote the dying words of Jesus: and for his 
assassin he would have prayed, "Father, for- 
give him, for he knows not what he does." 



THE BLESSINGS THAT COME 
FROM PRAYER 



"It is good for me to draw nigh unto God." — Ps. 73 : 28. 

AVERY large part of the Bible is taken 
up with the story of men who prayed to 
God and the remarkable results that came 
about through the answers to their prayers. 
The great men of the Bible are all men of 
prayer. Abel, the first saint in the line of noble 
manhood recorded in the sacred story, was more 
famous for his prayers and the pleasure they 
gave to God than for anything else. Enoch 
was a man of prayer ; his communion with God 
was so perfect, keeping him in such step with 
God's thoughts and purposes, that the inspired 
historian could think of nothing better to say 
of him than that he walked with God. And 
when the end came, it was so naturally the end 
of his God-accompanied life that the historian 
adds, "He was not; for God took him." 

Abraham was so pre-eminently a man of 

284 



BLESSINGS THAT COME FROM PRAYER 285 

prayer that he was known all over the Orient 
of his day as "the friend of God." Wherever 
Abraham went, tho he pitched his tents in the 
wilderness or in the desert, far from the dedi- 
cated temples of religion, he never failed to 
erect there an altar to God and hold com- 
munion with heaven. God talked with him as 
a man talks with his friend, and on occasions 
sent a committee of angels to consult with him 
on affairs of great moment. 

Job was a man of prayer. Nine-tenths of 
the wonderful Book of Job is the record of a 
series of prayers and God's answers to them. 
Paul was a man of prayer. We have many 
illustrations of the character of Paul's prayers 
in his letters to his friends. Often, as he is 
writing to them, he bursts out in prayer to God 
in their behalf. And he who is at once our 
divine Redeemer and our Example, was above 
all else a man of prayer. Often Jesus went 
into the mountain-wilderness at night, that he 
might be alone to talk with God and draw into 
his soul the solace and the strength needed 
for the work of the morrow. 

I am sure that it can not fail to be a blessing 
to each of us to study together some of the 



286 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



great blessings that can come through prayer. 

I. Prayer to God will exalt the spirit of 
our lives and give elevation to our thoughts. 
It is not possible for us really to concentrate 
our thoughts on the Ruler of the universe, at 
whose beck the planets come and go, whose 
breath can smite worlds with catastrophe or 
banish plagues from far-off globes, without 
lifting the mind to a wider horizon than the 
petty material things that have deprest or en- 
slaved us. Prayer lifts us out of ignoble self- 
ishness and narrow and unworthy living into a 
wider outlook and a clearer vision, and inspires 
us to nobler purpose. 

Prayer is indispensable in keeping alive in 
the soul a vivid realization of the high spiritual 
realities. The soul of man is like a fire in a 
furnace: If it is to be kept vigorously alive, it 
must have the breath of God to fan it con- 
stantly into flame. In the great days of the 
steamboats on the Columbia River they used 
wood for fuel, and I have seen the engineer 
open wide the doors of the huge furnace in 
order that the wind might have a fair chance 
at it, and the draft would be so strong that it 
was dangerous for a man off his guard to pass 



BLESSINGS THAT COME FROM PRAYER 287 

near it lest he be drawn into those devouring 
flames. The firemen at such a time would not 
hesitate to toss half a cord or more of green 
wood into the furnace at one time, for with that 
fierce draft the fire turned into steam power 
everything it could reach. But if the fireman 
had shut off the draft, in a little while the fire 
would have died down and the power would 
have dwindled to useless ashes. It is like that 
with our souls. What the wind was to that 
furnace fire, prayer is to our souls. If we live 
without prayer to God, the light and warmth 
and glow of wisdom and generosity and love 
will die out of our hearts for lack of the winds 
of God that come to us when we throw open 
the door of our souls to heaven in sincere 
prayer and communion with God. 

II. Prayer adds indescribable romance and 
adventurous interest to our every-day living. 
It is a widely circulated idea in some circles 
that a life of sin and carelessness of God's 
laws is more interesting and romantic than a 
life of Christian obedience to God. Nothing 
could be farther from the truth. Dr. W. R. 
Richards, of New York City, once preached a 
very interesting discourse on "The Monotony 



288 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of Sin," in which he imagines some ancient 
Babylonian visiting modern New York and 
being taken about to see the sights. His host 
shows him the great buildings and bridges and 
engineering achievements, and the man from 
the ancient world is filled with wonder and sur- 
prize. And then in the evening the New 
Yorker, who has reserved the exhibition of 
sin in its most seductive and fascinating guise 
to crown the day, is nonplussed when the Baby- 
lonian yawns and exclaims, "Oh, there is noth- 
ing new here. We had all this in Babylon 
three thousand years ago." There is nothing 
new in sin. Its new forms are simply re- 
vamped old forms. It is only in the higher 
realm, where you introduce into your life the 
touch of Almighty God, that you infuse into 
life the possibility of new adventures and ro- 
mance. Prayer makes higher ideals and richer 
intellectual and spiritual enjoyment not only 
possible but certain. 

Canon Farrar has beautifully said that 
prayer is to the soul what the dew is to the 
flowers of field or pasture. The burning wind 
of the summer's day may pass over them and 
the stems and blossoms droop and fade; but 



BLESSINGS THAT COME FROM PRAYER 289 

when the dew falls on them at night, they will 
revive. So prayer brings back to our purposes 
and aims the strength to achieve. For what we 
desire we ask, and what we ask we aim at, and 
what we aim at we shall attain. No man has 
ever honestly prayed to God to be made more 
noble, and sweet, and pure, and heavenly 
minded, no man has ever prayed that the evil 
spirits of hatred, and pride, and passion, and 
worldliness might be cast out of his soul, with- 
out his prayer being granted. George Mac- 
donald says : 

"We doubt the word that tells us: 'Ask, 

And ye shall have your prayer': 
We turn our thoughts as to a task 
With wills constrained and rare. 

"And yet we have; these scanty prayers 
Bring gold without alloy; 
O God ! but he who trusts and dares 
Must have a boundless joy." 

III. Prayer enriches our imagination and 
purifies our language just as sin debases the 
imagination and profanity impoverishes 
speech. It is a pitiful mistake to imagine that 
men lose in possible vivacity and human in- 
terest by developing through prayer the spirit- 



■290 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ual life. There never was a greater lie than 
that the devil makes some men believe — that 
sin is more interesting and entertaining than 
goodness. All the variety there is in sin is in 
the first act of sin: all the freshness goes, and 
there are no such yawning, disgusted, bored 
souls on earth as the men and women who nau- 
seate each other in sinful fellowship. 

And how profanity impoverishes the speech! 
Many a boy begins to swear thinking to make 
his conversation more interesting, but he soon 
finds himself a slave to two or three oaths. In- 
stead of enriching his vocabulary, it has left 
him linguistically a poor, ragged hobo. Robert 
Speer says that he has a friend who owns a 
setter dog with more different ways of express- 
ing emotion and ideas by his tail than some 
profane men have with all the resources of the 
English language at their disposal. But while 
the habit of profane speech is the surest way 
to the loss of freshness and richness of lan- 
guage, there is no way so to inspire noble pic- 
tures in the imagination, to enrich the vocabu- 
lary in words of meaning and power, and to 
clothe all thought and speech with an atmos- 
phere as fresh as the morning, as is the habit 



BLESSINGS THAT COME FROM PRAYER 291 

of prayer to God concerning our own lives and 
the lives of those who are dear to us. 

IV. Prayer hallows all our human friend- 
ships and loves and lifts all our friendships and 
associations to a high and noble plane. Paul 
is always telling his friends in his letters how 
he thanks God for them every time he remem- 
bers them, and he speaks of the rich blessings 
he is constantly asking God to bestow upon 
them. If we constantly, day after day, talk to 
God about those who are dear to us, we can not 
fail to become better and truer friends. This 
practise also tends to associate our friends with 
God and aids us to be a greater blessing to 
them. It is impossible that we should sincerely 
bring their needs into our conversation with 
our heavenly Father without increasing our 
sense of personal responsibility for them, and 
without our seeking, in every available way, 
to be God's messengers to answer our prayers 
concerning them. 

Prayer for our friends can not fail to in- 
crease our love for them and our appreciation 
of them and our loyalty to them. Prayer is a 
great solace to our loneliness when separated 
from those whom we love. It seems to bring to 



292 THE WINDS OF GOD 

our hearts a comforting sense of their nearness. 

The writer of the old hymn had real poetic 
insight when he sung: 

"Tho sundered far, by faith they meet 
Around one common mercy seat." 

Prayer for our friends lifts the human bond 
out of the mere sensual pleasure of being to- 
gether and into a spiritual and intellectual fel- 
lowship — a kindredship of soul which is hal- 
lowed by the love of God for us. There is no 
nobler spectacle for men or angels than two 
loving souls who, tho separated by wide dis- 
tance of time and place, yet daily meet in 
sacred tryst in the heart of God in loving and 
grateful petitions for each other. In this way, 
surely, Tennyson's beautiful poem is realized; 
through these prayers of friend for friend, 

. . . "The whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

Prayer is the one silver lining to the darkest 
cloud that can fill our day with gloom. Out of 
weakness and sin and failure there is only one 
sure way of escape, and that is through the 
open gate of prayer. Do you remember that 



BLESSINGS THAT COME FROM PRAYER 293 

most suggestive and significant scene por- 
trayed in the sixth chapter of Isaiah? It opens 
with the prophet fallen down on his face in the 
temple, his mouth in his hand, and his hand in 
the dust. Conscious that his life is full of evil, 
he cries aloud out of his realization of utter 
failure, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I 
dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips" ; 
in his complete humility and self-abasement he 
surrenders himself utterly to the mercy of God, 
Then it is he hears the divine voice saying: 
"Man, let me touch thy lips; this is the hour 
of a new life to thee. Stand upon thy feet." 
And out of the depth of failure and unclean- 
ness he rises to his feet with new hope and 
courage. When he hears that divine voice 
again calling for volunteers to lead a great 
heroic forlorn hope for right — "Whom shall I 
send, and who will go for us?" — it is this young 
Isaiah, whose prayer has just lifted his soul 
out of the abyss of despair, who answers, with 
a voice ringing with good cheer and confidence, 
"Here am I, send me." 



TO-DAY— THE MOST IMPORTANT 
DAY OF LIFE 



"This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will 
rejoice and be glad in it." — Ps. 118 : 24. 

TO-DAY is always the most important of 
all days; therefore the poet's appeal to 
concentrate all our energies on the present is 
amply justified: 

"Make this a day. There is no gain 

In brooding over days to come; 
The message of to-day is plain, 

The future's lips are ever dumb. 
The work of yesterday is gone — 

For good or ill, let come what may; 
But now we face another dawn; 

Make this a day. 

"Though yesterday we failed to see 

The urging hand and earnest face 
That men call Opportunity; 

We failed to know the time or place 
For some great deed, what need to fret? 

The dawn comes up a silvery gray; 
The golden moment must be met : 

Make this a day. 

294 



TO-DAY— MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF LIFE 295 

"This clay is yours ; your work is yours, 

The odds are not who pays your hire; 
The thing accomplished — that endures. 

If it be what the days require. 
He who takes up his daily round, 

As one new armored for the fray, 
To-morrowJ- steps on solid ground: 

Make this a day." 

Longfellow, too, has a very sweet and lumi- 
nous line: 

"To-day grows the harvest of heaven." 

Canon Farrar, commenting on that, sug- 
gests that it requires very aggressive and active 
cultivation on our part if that heavenly harvest 
is to be realized. With tremendous force he 
commands, "Have you an enemy? Then this 
very day forgive him. Have you wronged, or 
are you wronging another? Then this very 
day make him restitution. Are you a slanderer 
or a systematic depreciator of your brethren? 
Then cease to speak evil, and fling your unhal- 
lowed pen into the fire. Are you idle? Then 
go home and earn your bread by the sweat of 
your brow. Are you stained with impurity? 
Then come with that leprosy to him whose 
answer to the leper's cry — 'Lord, if thou wilt, 



295 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



thou canst make me clean/ came like an echo — 
'I will ; be thou clean.' " There is no reforma- 
tion possible at any time in the future that is 
not possible to-day. The time to repent of any 
evil is now. It may seem a hard thing to do 
to-day, but it will be harder to-morrow. "To- 
day is the day of salvation" to every sinning 
soul. 

I. To-day is critical on our future. To-day 
is molding us, even in the face and form of 
our bodies. I have been reading a very beauti- 
ful study by the editor of the Christian W orld 
of London, England, under the fascinating 
title "The Feast of Faces." The writer is 
speaking of the human faces seen on a great 
city street. He declares that in each face we 
encounter a picture beyond the compass of the 
greatest human artist to portray, and a book 
deeper than may be found in the work of a 
Homer or a Shakespeare. The human face is 
at once the most instructive and the most mys- 
terious and baffling thing on the earth. We 
have in it a sort of sublime Marconi instru- 
ment which vibrates to a spiritual touch from 
the heavens : science is utterly baffled at trying 
to explain how it is that the soul thrills through 



TO-DAY— MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF LIFE 297 

and suffuses the human countenance with a 
glow of intelligence, and makes there a register 
that is ineffaceable — "If consciousness were 
simply a form of material energy, then in the 
same way that heat disappears by its conver- 
sion into motion, would nerve force disappear 
in the production of feeling." So science, up 
to this time, has met its Waterloo in the human 
face. In the faces of men and women and 
children two worlds meet with two sets of 
laws. It is this which gives the face its wonder 
and fascination. Fashioned by reason and 
lighted by soul, it shines, in its every feature, 
with the supernatural. 

The writer to whom I have referred writes 
at length on the register of life's experiences 
in the face. 

"The faces we ponder most," he remarks, "are those that 
carry history in them. As we look into some we realize at 
once that here the great choices, the great decisions, have 
been made; here has been the inner victory; the soul within 
has fronted life, the tug of its lower desires, the impact 
of its strange fortunes, and has emerged triumphant. That 
victory, we feel, has been won for us all. We share in it as 
we glance at the clear eye and at the lighted features." 

How often have each of us looked into the 
faces of strangers and seen there the record of 



298 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



such joyous human triumphs that it was hard 
for us not to speak to them and congratulate 
them on the splendid victory which has made 
life such a glad thing to them and through 
them to the world. Often we look in a face and 
know, down to the very core of brain and heart, 
that a beautiful soul is passing by. We feel 
larger and stronger and happier because of the 
toll of courage and joy we took from that 
radiant face even in the instant of its passing 
out of sight. Unconsciously such a face blesses 
the world. Something of heaven's glory shines 
through such a face just as the sun's light 
comes through the window of your dwelling. 

But of course we see other faces. As we look 
on some faces and see heaven in them, so we 
look on others and shudder at the hell of evil 
and torment we behold registered there. Evil 
as well as good has the power to paint itself 
on that marvelous film of the human face. The 
thoughts I think, the purposes I plan, the im- 
aginations I cherish, the love or the hate I 
allow to hold control in the deeps of my soul 
to-day, will leave their marks in my counte- 
nance and register the time of day in character 
on my face which God, in some mysterious 



TO-DAY— MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF LIFE 299 

way, has made to be the dial-plate of my real 
self. Then how important is to-day with me. 
This day the inner self is registering hate or 
love on my features. This day benevolence or 
avarice has far-reaching pencils at work on 
that heaven-prepared canvas. This day is 
God's painting day for fadeless beauty if I 
will it so, or it may be the devil's branding day 
if my heart surrenders itself to his evil sway. 
God help each of us to understand and ap- 
preciate the critical importance of to-day! 

"Strong souls within the present live, 
The future veiled, the past forgot; 
Grasping what is, with hands of steel, 
They bind what shall be to their will." 

II. To-day, then, is glorious because it is 
more than to-day ; it reaches toward the future 
with power to dictate in a large way what shall 
be. That is in part what Browning meant, 
when in that wonderful poem, "Andrea Del 
Sarto," he makes the great artist who is paint- 
ing, not to please the critics, but to express to 
the uttermost the beauty thirst of his own soul, 
say, "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his 
grasp, or what's a heaven for?" So we should 
feel the magnetic drawings of to-morrow, the 



300 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



tugging of history yet to be made, pulling at 
us in our opportunities for high and noble liv- 
ing in our to-day. 

"To-day'' has been making for countless 
thousands of years. God did not simply hand 
"to-day," with its infinite possibilities for bless- 
ing, ready-made out of the skies — Ah, no! 
"To-day" has been making since the beginning 
of time ; since chaos ; since God looked out over 
that darkness and said, "Let there be light, and 
there was light" ; since God said, "Let us make 
man in our own image." That we might see 
this wonderful day of the twentieth century of 
the Christian era, men and women have been 
toiling and struggling and sweating the blood 
of body and brain and soul from Adam until 
now. Noah and Abraham and Moses laid foun- 
dations for to-day. Elijah and Elisha and Job 
helped on toward to-day. David sang of to- 
day. Isaiah and Daniel and the prophets for 
centuries longed for and caught glimpses of 
to-day. Jesus lived and preached and healed 
and was crucified and rose from the dead, as- 
cended into heaven, and maketh intercession at 
the right hand of the throne of God that this 
"to-day" of ours might dawn. Paul and Peter 



TO-DAY— MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF LIFE 301 



and John and the early Christians preached 
and wrote and suffered and gave their lives in 
martyrdom to make to-day possible. Types 
were invented, the Bible was printed, Luther 
thundered, Whitefield and the Wesleys covered 
the earth with their burning evangelism, to 
make our ' 'to-day." The Mayflower dared the 
winter seas; Franklin and the Adamses and 
Jefferson and George Washington and the 
Revolutionary heroes fought the heroic battles 
of their time, that we might see "to-day." 
Abraham Lincoln and all the glorious heroes 
of the later epoch of the struggle for freedom 
were a part of the preparation for "to-day." 
Steamships and railroads and telegraphs and 
telephones and automobiles and airplanes have 
had their part in making "to-day." On a 
higher plane it may be said that all the great 
souls of all ages — Wilberforce and John 
Howard and Dorothea Dix and Frances Wil- 
lard and a thousand nameless ones — toiled and 
battled and poured out their lives in holy sacri- 
fice in order that our eyes might behold "to- 
day." But a hand's-breadth away, in our own 
generation, we have seen from every quarter of 
the globe, including our own dear land, twenty 



302 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



millions of men go forth to war, leaving the 
peaceful arts of the life they loved; and other 
millions of heroic women go forth to hospital 
and camp to minister to their needs. We have 
seen millions of these noble souls lay down 
their lives not only with bravery, but with 
glorious joy on the altar of human liberty. 

Ah, let no man hold "to-day" lightly. It is 
the most costly day in all human history. I 
call upon you by all the toil and sweat and 
tears and blood and holy sacrifice that have 
marked humanity's progress for thousands of 
years to make much of this "to-day" which 
God in his infinite mercy has bestowed upon 
us. 



TO WHOM DO WE BELONG? 



"Ye are not your own." — 1 Cor. 6 : 19. 

IN the revolt against kings and autocratic 
governments there is danger that the pen- 
dulum of our human clock will swing too far in 
the other direction. Many resent all control 
over their own individual whims and fancies. 
The Bolshevist, the I. W. W„ the man who 
waves the red flag, has swung so far in the other 
direction that he becomes an Ishmaelite, his 
hand against every man, a threat against the 
very foundation and existence of the race and 
every organized form of mutual helpfulness 
and service. 

At such an hour it is good to look long and 
deeply at the fundamental verities of our 
human life, some of the eternal truths which 
can not be shaken. 

Paul declares that "no man liveth unto him- 
self"; that we can not break off at a tangent 
and go our own way, regardless of others, 

303 



304 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



without sad wreckage. We are not our own. 
Other beings, human and divine, have invest- 
ments in us, and we can not lose without their 
losing. We have been bought at a great price 
and our lives are not our own to spend care- 
lessly or recklessly. Let us study, then, for a 
brief space, this very interesting and important 
question: "To whom do we belong?" 

I. First we belong to humanity as a whole — 
to our race. The long evolution that has lifted 
our race out of painted savagery into our mod- 
ern civilization, with all the gentle arts of living 
handed down to us, has put us under deep and 
binding obligations to multiplied millions of 
men and women who, in ruder times, struggled 
and toiled and fought against lethargy and evil, 
and thought and prayed and hoped and in- 
vented, and by their efforts lifted the race step 
by step to a higher level. You may go back 
along the pathway of human life on the earth 
and find many "mounts of human anguish" 
where heroic souls paid the price of purchase 
for you and for me and made each of us for- 
ever a debtor and a servant of our race. 

II. We belong peculiarly to our own day 
and generation. We who have lived through 



TO WHOM DO WE BELONG? 



305 



the last few years have been bought anew at a 
fearful price and dare not consider our lives 
in any narrow or selfish sense to belong to 
ourselves. Gov. Henry J. Allen, of Kansas, 
the next day after the armistice was signed 
which called a halt to the great war, printed in 
his daily paper a declaration worthy to be 
graven on all American hearts : 

" 'In the beauty of the lilies 

Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom 

That transfigures you and me. 
As he died to make men holy 
Men have died to make us free 
Our God is marching on'." 

"O'er the shattered Cathedral at Rheims, over the ruins 
of the Cloth Hall at Ypres, over the skeletons of trees and a 
million graves, over tortured Belgium and Serbia, St. 
Mihiel, the Ourcq, Argonne, Sedan, and other immortalized 
battlefields, the dawn of the new day breaks. The warm 
rays gild and soften the wrecked continents. 

"Birds will sing again and the forgiving fairies of nature 
will heal the sears. The forces of evil have been crushed, 
and the voice of God now speaks through the voice of the 
people. The world is safe for free self-governing nations. 
Tyrants are gone forever. 'Break forth into joy, sing to- 
gether ye waste places of J erusalem, for the Lord hath com- 
forted his people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem.' 'The 
people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.' 
'For unto us a Child is born, unto us a son is given; and 



306 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the government shall be upon his shoulder.' Henceforth the 
government and leadership of the world must be from 
above. For centuries ambitious men have striven to govern 
or lead the world. All have failed. It is destined that they 
should not succeed. Even one of the greatest spokesmen of 
modern self-government has felt the restraining hand of 
the sovereign people in the climax when he sought too much 
power for himself. For we are all but clay and the Lord 
alone is the potter. The one Leader of the world must 
speak through all the people. 'Vox populi, vox Dei.' There 
are no chosen ones among us. Only one man can lead the 
world out of its trouble, and that is the humblest of the 
humble, the lowly Nazarene, whose 'name shall be called 
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the 
Prince of Peace.' 

"Henceforth men must realize that formal government 
can advance only as rapidly as moral government. The 
good impulses that are to change the world and make it 
better must come from the hearts of men through love of 
sendee and love of God. They can not be imposed upon 
from without by formulas or changed by man-made laws. 

"If this peace is to endure a thousand years, it must be 
built on something more than man-made forms or mechan- 
ical covenants. As long as men's hearts are imperfect there 
will be bickerings and conflicts. As men's hearts approach 
nearer to perfection, world-wide peace will become more 
and more assured. There is no possibility of making a per- 
fect social order out of imperfect material. And for this 
reason the only salvation of the world from war is through 
the individual hearts which reach toward God. 

"Out of the overwhelming joy of the world, out of the 
greatest triumphs for liberty of all the centuries, out of 
the clatter of the market-place, the weighty disputations 
of the forum and the man-made schemings and plannings 
for the things that are to come, there must come a solemn 
hush : 



TO WHOM DO WE BELONG? 307 



"'The tumult and the shouting dies; 
The captains and the kings depart; 
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice — 

An humble and a contrite heart. 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet 
Lest we forget, lest we forget/" 

Few men in our time or any time have writ- 
ten a more splendid trumpet call to the deep 
heart of humanity. It was evidently penned 
in the same high and noble spirit of reverence 
toward God which Paul felt when he wrote 
our text. We must realize with Paul and 
Governor Allen that we are not our own ; that 
we have been bought with a great price in order 
that we may cleanse ourselves from all selfish- 
ness and evil of every kind and rise to the 
highest possible service of God in his great 
love and purpose for the redemption of our 
race. 

III. All this leads to the wonderful state- 
ment Paul makes, that at the last analysis we 
belong to God. God so loved the world that 
he gave his son, the ever-blessed Christ, to die 
to ransom and redeem us from our sins. It was 
God's love that made possible man's redemp- 
tion from sin. The world is full of redeeming 
love. Mothers and fathers, wives and hus- 



308 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



bands, children and friends, every relation of 
life and every stratum of human living have 
furnished illustrations of how a great love does 
not hesitate to suffer in order to bring wan- 
dering feet back into the path of righteous liv- 
ing. 

But we need not go outside of the Bible it- 
self to find a marvelous illustration of how the 
infinite love of God brought us back from our 
bondage to sin and cleansed us from our in- 
iquities. If you will read the book of Hosea, 
you may get illumination on the way in which 
Christ bought our guilty souls and made us 
forever his own possession. The Prophet 
Hosea was married to a woman who had won 
his whole heart. She was not worthy of it, but 
he poured out to her all the wealth of affection 
of one of the noblest hearts that ever throbbed 
in a human breast. She was a foolish, un- 
reliable, superficial woman. Not long after 
her marriage she became unfaithful to her hus- 
band. In the most abandoned way she entered 
upon shameful and wicked intrigues with other 
men. Hosea soon came to know of the shame 
and dishonor that had disgraced his home, but 
in the splendid magnanimity of his manhood he 



TO WHOM DO WE BELONG? 



309 



continued to love her. After a time a child 
was born in his house that was the fruit of her 
sin and, in his broken-hearted misery, Hosea 
named the child "Lo-ammi," meaning "Not of 
my people." Finally the wicked woman left 
his home and became a public woman of the 
street. She went from bad to worse in her dis- 
solute life until she reached the dregs and was 
sold, according to the custom of the day, as a 
slave. But Hosea, tho she had dishonored his 
home and shamed and disgraced him, had never 
ceased to love her, and when he knew she was to 
be put up at auction in the slave market, he 
forgot all the sins against his honor and his 
love, or because of his great affection overcame 
all such memories, and went to that slave sale 
and bought her from her owner and took her 
back with him to his home again, and with in- 
finite tenderness and compassion, redeemed 
and saved her from her life of shame. She was 
no longer her own — Hosea bought her; the 
money he paid was the smallest part of the 
price. Who can tell the awful anguish of that 
noble man's soul, as with all eyes curiously or 
sneeringly or pityingly fastened on him, that 
noble-hearted man went into that slave mar- 



310 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



ket to buy back his wife as a wanton of the city 
street. But it was a miracle of love. He could 
do it and he did do it because he loved her. He 
took her shame and sin on his own shoulders. 
He became branded with sin for her sake. And 
when he had paid the price and took her ten- 
derly by the hand and made way for her 
through the curious, astonished crowd of 
lookers-on and walked down the street by her 
side, protecting her from insult, he was 
wounded for her transgressions, he was bruised 
(oh, how cruelly he was bruised) for her in- 
iquities. Surely the chastisement of her peace 
was upon him, and by the stripes that patient, 
noble-hearted husband bore for her sake and 
the great love he bore her she at last was healed. 
He went to his garden of Gethsemane when 
he went down into that slave market as truly 
as Jesus went to his in the Mount of Olives. 
He sweat blood in his agony as Jesus did in the 
dark night amid the sleeping disciples, and 
every sneer in that auction crowd was a nail 
that pierced his quivering heart as surely as 
Jesus was nailed to his cross. But love paid 
the price and won the prize. By his love and 
suffering and fellowship he cleansed the worn- 



TO WHOM DO WE BELONG? 



311 



an he loved and redeemed her. I like to 
think that after she had become a truly good 
and holy woman she must have been the most 
grateful and loving wife of her age. 

But let us find in it a great illustration of 
the debt we owe to God and our Savior. 
God's love sought us and would not let us be 
lost. Christ's love made him willing to take 
the poverty and shame and disgrace and sin 
that belonged to us on his own shoulders. He 
bought us by becoming sin and shame for us. 
Thank God, he has the power and the goodness 
to cleanse us from all our iniquities if we will 
yield ourselves as Hosea's redeemed wife did 
to her husband. 

How unworthy is any formal or indifferent 
recognition on our part of the atonement made 
for us by him who bought us with his own pre- 
cious blood. Nothing short of all our hearts, 
all the passionate devotion of our natures, all 
the loving obedience of our lives, can make any 
adequate return for the price he paid for our 
salvation. 

"Where the whole realm of nature mine 
That were a present far too small. 
Love so amazing, so divine, 

Demands my love, my life, my all !" 



MY GOSPEL 



"According to my gospel." — Rom. 2 : 16. 
"In every good work trust thine own soul." 

— Ecclus 32 : 23. 

THE scope of our theme depends on what 
we mean by that oft-repeated word, "gos- 
pel." When you trace it back to its root in 
Paul's mind and heart, I am sure that to him it 
meant "An interpretation of Christ.' ' This 
also agrees with the consensus of opinion in all 
Christian lands. At the opening of the New 
Testament we have four very small books, 
known as the Gospel according to Matthew; 
the Gospel according to Mark ; the Gospel ac- 
cording to Luke ; and the Gospel according to 
John. Each of these little books tells the story 
of one man's remembrance of the life and say- 
ings of Jesus during his public ministry and of 
his conduct and bearing under the pressure of 
notable experiences. Each of these men writes 
his own story as he saw it ; that is, he gives his 
own independent interpretation of Christ, and 

312 



MY GOSPEL 



313 



what he writes becomes, in a very distinctive 
sense, his own gospel. These men, writing of 
the most wonderful character in all human his- 
tory, naturally do not write the same story. 
They are writing at different times and places, 
and their stories partake of their own tempera- 
ments and moods and the characteristics of 
their individual minds. Each of these four 
gospels is colored with the peculiarities and 
tone of the man who writes; and yet each 
writer has given us a gospel — an interpretation 
of Jesus. But in order to get the best interpre- 
tation, we need to take the composite picture 
which we get by putting together the writings 
of all these four who have told of their Master 
and ours. When we have got all the light 
that these four gospels can throw on fche char- 
acter and conduct of Jesus and his wonderful 
atonement for sinful men, his resurrection 
from the dead, and his ascension into heaven, 
we turn to these remarkable letters of Paul and 
are immediately made to feel that we have 
come on a new and rich and illuminating inter- 
pretation of Jesus ; a very different interpre- 
tation, not in any sense antagonistic or incon- 
sistent with the first four, but different, even 



314 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



as Paul himself was different. All this is in- 
evitable concerning any interpretation where 
human personality enters into testimony or de- 
scription. Let any four men undertake to 
describe a river. One is a pilot: Like Mark 
Twain he will tell you about currents and chan- 
nels. He will have much to say about how 
sand bars are formed; how the veering of cur- 
rents will crumble a farm into fragments on 
one bank of the stream, carry it miles away 
and deposit it on the opposite shore, perhaps 
in a different State, as often happens along the 
Missouri River. He will tell of snags to avoid, 
and his conversation will be like the log of a 
river steamer. 

Another man is a fisherman : to him a river 
is simply a fish farm to be tilled. He knows 
where the great schools of catfish or buffalo 
swarm; he knows where they feed and where 
they congregate under the ice in sluggish 
sloughs in winter, and how he may sometimes 
capture a carload at a single haul of his seine: 
To him the river is only a fish pond. 

Another man is an electrical engineer. He 
is out on a search for power: to him a river is 
nothing but so much horsepower. He can tell 



MY GOSPEL 



315 



you of the fall in so many miles of the river 
bed. He can tell you the speed of the current. 
He can tell you where a dam can be built, and 
how many tons of water can be stored, and 
how much power can be developed to be car- 
ried on wires, hundreds of miles, to drive mills 
and light towns and throw interurban cars like 
shuttles between far-off cities. To him a river 
is only a source of power. 

A fourth man, an artist, looks on the river 
only as a thing of beauty. 

A fifth man thinks of it in the language of 
irrigation when the land is dry and thirsty, and 
to him a river is simply so much fertility to be 
drawn off in canals and spreatl out over a thou- 
sand farms that at its approach shall blossom 
as the rose. 

The interpretation which Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, John, and Paul give to this marvelous 
personality and career of Jesus Christ is some- 
thing like that. Each is genuinely loyal and 
faithful to Jesus; but because he is human, he 
tells more about himself than he does about 
Jesus; and so what he tells is never in any 
case all the gospel, nor is it entitled to be called 
the gospel or the complete gospel, but is truly 



316 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the gospel according to John, or Paul, as the 
case may be. So Paul is entirely within his 
rights when he says "my gospel." 

In just as real a sense as Mark or Paul were 
interpreters of Christ, we also are interpreters 
of our Master if we, in our own time and place, 
are living the spiritual life with sincere hearts. 

That word "spiritual," and the phrase, "the 
spiritual life," have been so abused and carica- 
tured in our day that people are afraid of these 
great terms. Many have claimed to be spirit- 
ual on the strength of certain shibboleths or a 
certain capacity for excitable feelings, while 
all the time their conduct was unworthy and 
degraded. But we must not forget what Paul 
says, that "to be spiritually minded is life and 
peace." 

Brierley, the great English essayist, gives 
us a very clear definition of what it is to be 
spiritual. He says that spirituality is two 
things — a perception and a performance. It 
is, for one thing, to realize God as everywhere 
in his world, to accept with reverent gladness 
every variety of its phenomena and every 
phase of its experience as a new manifestation 
of God. The spiritual man is he, who, in a 



MY GOSPEL 



317 



sunset on the Alps, or in a sonata of Beetho- 
ven, or a problem of mathematics, in the age- 
long drama of history, in the laughter of little 
children, in the events of his own life, in the 
questions and answers of his experience, in his 
highest aspirations, sees everywhere the mani- 
festations of God which his soul's voice tells 
him is the divine love, to be united with which 
is the one final craving and cry of his heart. 

Brierley declares that with this perception 
comes a performance on our part to match the 
light which has come to mind and heart. 
Knowing the universe as spiritual, its law as 
holy, the spiritual man seeks as his dearest 
boon to conform his action and character to 
that law. The law is broad. All knowledge, 
all science, all skill are included in it. A Mo- 
zart's perfection in music or the mathematics 
of a man who spans Niagara with a vast bridge 
may be equally akin to the spiritual. No par- 
ticular profession or vocation has any monop- 
oly of spirituality. The practical man who 
deals with such material things as earth and 
cement and steel may be more truly spiritual 
in the reverence of his attitude to the immanent 
God than the poet or the philosopher. Indeed, 



318 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the key to all true human greatness is this atti- 
tude of the soul of the worker toward the rela- 
tion of God to himself and his work. No man 
is really great, no matter how much temporary 
noise he makes, apart from this greatness. 
Christ is supreme as the spiritual Man of all 
history because his whole being answered to the 
spiritual and thrilled in perfect harmony to the 
sense of God. Mr. Bryce, speaking of Glad- 
stone and of the secret of his greatness — which 
made him the foremost citizen of the world in 
his own time — says: "He led a third life also, 
the secret life of the soul. Religion was of all 
things that which had the strongest hold upon 
his thoughts and feelings." The same words 
might have been used with equal pertinency 
and truth of Theodore Roosevelt, who fol- 
lowed Gladstone as the foremost citizen of the 
world. 

Well indeed does Brierley say that this 
spirituality of nature is the hallmark of man- 
hood. As we rise out of the slough of the ani- 
mal and become more completely human, the 
more clearly does the world appear to us as 
spiritual; and the more do we feel 



MY GOSPEL 



319 



"Through all our fleshly dress 
Bright shoots of everlastingness." 

The advance of Christianity among men must 
always depend on the faithfulness with which 
each Christian man or woman gives his own in- 
terpretation of Jesus to the people. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes sings: 

"A holy life is Heaven's unquestioned text; 

That shining radiance doubt can never mar, — 
The pillar's flame, the light of Bethlehem's star!" 

It is the glory of our humanity that we are in- 
dividual, and that it is possible for each one of 
us to give something peculiarly attractive 
through our gospel to draw men's admiration 
and love to Christ. Great living is very sim- 
ple, it is only to 

"Do what you can 
Be what you are 
Shine like the glowworm 
If you can't be a star." 

To those near to it the glowworm may be much 
more important that the star. 

Browning has the same thought in mind 
when he extols 



120 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"The chivalry 
That dares the right and disregards alike 
The yea and nay o' the world." 

There is something on which every one of 
us should feed our soul's individuality and 
courage in these splendid lines of the poet: 

"By thine own soul's law learn to live, 
And if men thwart thee take no heed; 

And if men hate thee have no care ; 
Sing thou thy song, and do thy deed; 

Hope thou thy hope and pray thy prayer, 
And claim no crown they will not give, 
Nor bays they grudge thee for thy hair. 

"Keep thou thy soul-won, steadfast oath, 
And to thy heart be true thy heart; 

What thy soul teaches learn to know, 
And play out thine appointed part, 
And thou shalt reap as thou shalt sow, 
Nor helped nor hardened in thy growth, 
To thy full stature thou shalt grow." 

If we are Democrats or Republicans simply 
because our fathers were, we add nothing to 
the world's store of political knowledge. Or 
if we are Methodists or Presbyterians or Bap- 
tists just because we were born in such a home, 
we add nothing to the religious knowledge of 
the world. Let us believe that when God 
created vis, it was as truly an individual crea- 



MY GOSPEL 



321 



tion as when a Luther or a Wesley or a Paul 
was born. Let us not be imitators only; let 
us give our own minds and hearts a fair chance 
for usefulness. 

"Whatever you are — be that; 

Whatever you say — be true ; 
Straightforwardly act — 
Be honest — in fact 

Be nobody else but you." 

True, some people use their individuality only 
as a matter of stubbornness. I mean a nobler 
thing than that. Live, through prayer and 
kindly, earnest service for your fellows, in 
whatever place you are, in such a genuine 
friendship with Jesus Christ that he will reveal 
some vision of his infinite loveliness to your 
heart, and you shall catch from the glowing 
countenance of the Master some light from 
heaven which will give to your peculiar person- 
ality a radiant charm which to some souls 
about you will make you the most glorious 
gospel of the great God they will ever hear 
or read. 

Perhaps Priscilla Leonard's lines will make 

it clearer to you than any words of mine: 



322 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"There is some place for you to fill, 

Some work for you to do, 
That no one can or ever will 

Do quite as well as you. 
It may be close along your way, 

Some little homely duty, 
That only waits your touch, your sway, 

To blossom into beauty. 

"Or it may be that daily tasks, 

Cheerfully seen and done, 
Will lead to greater work that asks 

For you and you alone. 
Be brave, whatever it may be, 

The little or the great, 
To meet and do it perfectly, 

And you have conquered fate." 

The glory of every man and woman being 
brave enough to shoulder their duty and to go 
forth to do it with all the original power given 
them in their creation is that they give God 
a chance for a new and glorious adventure. 
Life for us is something new and splendid and 
romantic when we cease to be imitators and 
surrender ourselves under the leadership of 
the Spirit divine to become adventurers in 
God's good world. In the book of Jeremiah 
is the command, "Dwell deep." What a motto 
for a life! 



MY GOSPEL 



323 



James Buckham sings : 

'■'Dwell deep. The little things that chafe and fret, 
Oh. waste not golden hours to give them heed ! 

The slight, the thoughtless wrong do thou forget. 
Be self -forgot in serving other's need. 

Thou faith in God through love for man shalt keep. 

Dwell deep, my soul, dwell deep." 



THE TENTH MAN 



"Where are the nine?"— Luke 17: 17. 

TEN lepers on the border between Samaria 
and Galilee wandered in a group — poor 
outcasts. If any one passed, they must stand 
aloof, far out of the track of travel, and call 
the hateful warning that they were unclean. 
But news had sifted through the land to these 
ten unfortunate and unhappy men that a 
young rabbi from Nazareth had shown him- 
self possest of wonderful power to heal dis- 
eases, and had even been known to heal lep- 
rosy. So these men, who had for a long time 
been hopeless outcasts from their fellows, 
found hope springing up in their hearts, that 
if in some way they could call their sad con- 
dition to the attention of this powerful and 
merciful young rabbi, they might find health 
and recovery at his hand. So, hearing that he 
was passing through this border country, they 
took their stand far off from the road they ex- 

324 



THE TENTH MAN 



325 



pected Jesus to use, but near enough to make 
him hear. As he drew nigh, with mingled emo- 
tions of doubt and hope and fear they called 
aloud, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" 
And Christ paused in his journey and looked 
with kindness and compassion on the pitiful 
group of ten lepers and said, "Go and show 
yourselves unto the priests." 

There must have been something very mag- 
netic and convincing about the speech of Jesus. 
Once when he was speaking in the open air, 
the police of Jerusalem were sent to arrest him. 
They listened to him a while and came back 
without saying a word to him and told the peo- 
ple who had sent them, "Never man spake like 
this man." So when Jesus uttered this simple 
command to the lepers, they immediately, 
without question or quibbling of any kind, 
obeyed him and started to find the priests. 
And as they went, they were healed. 

Nine of these men went on; all, no doubt, 
greatly relieved and comforted; but went their 
own way and did not return to tell Jesus the 
great good news of their healing or to thank 
him for his wonderful miracle of mercy and 
love. The tenth man came back, came back in 



326 



THE WINDS GF GOD 



great emotion and gratitude, full of love and 
adoration for Jesus. Coming where he was, 
the man fell on his face at the feet of the Mas- 
ter and with loud voice shouted for all to hear 
his glad and happy testimony of the healing 
he had received, and so glorified God for his 
miracle of grace. 

It evidently pleased Jesus very much to have 
this man return with such a warm-hearted ex- 
pression of thanks; but the grieved disap- 
pointment of his tender heart concerning the 
others is easily seen in his sad query, * 'Where 
are the nine?" 

I. We should learn from this striking story 
that it is not enough to feel gratitude in our 
hearts; we should definitely express it in 
words and by conduct. Mercy shown to us is 
such a beautiful thing, such a divine thing, that 
both in giving and receiving we should take 
care to do it in a gracious and beautiful way — 
the most beautiful way possible for us. In 
Paul's letter to the Romans in the twentieth 
chapter, where he gives so»many wise, common- 
sense rules for the Christian's daily life, he 
says that there are many deeds, good in them- 
selves, which lose much of their beauty and use- 



THE TENTH MAN 



327 



fulness when they do not have a proper setting. 
For instance, if a man is going to rule, he must 
do it with diligence: a careless or lazy ruler 
always brings trouble to his people. Diligence 
is the proper setting for official power, and in 
connection with that Paul refers to showing 
mercy, and says that "he that showeth mercy" 
must do it "with cheerfulness/' So in showing 
our appreciation of mercy, we should seek to 
do it in the most beautiful and delightful way 
within our power. Gratitude is such a beau- 
tiful feeling that it deserves a loving and ador- 
able setting that shall bring the highest and 
noblest possible good cheer and pleasure to 
the one who has extended mercy and blessing 
to us. 

But in our present study I am specially im- 
prest that Jesus himself has suggested to us, by 
the question in our text, a most helpful and 
profitable line of consideration. Jesus asks, 
"Where are the nine?" Why are they not 
here also to show their appreciation and glorify 
God as this man is doing? There is our line 
of search. If we can through our knowledge 
of the motives of human nature find those nine 
men, we will not have hunted in vain for bene- 
fit from this theme. 



328 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Not knowing their names I will indicate 
these men by number. 

Number One. I think this first man who 
went away and never came back to thank Jesus 
for healing was one of those who always take 
their blessings gloomily. Elizabeth Akers has 
a little song about the weeping willow that 
tells his story. She remonstrates : 

"0 willow, why forever weep, 

As one who mourns an endless wrong? 
What hidden woe can lie so deep? 
"What utter grief can last so long? 

"The spring makes haste with step elate 
Your life and beauty to renew; 
She even bids the roses wait, 
And gives her £rst sweet care to you. 

"The welcome redbreast folds his wing, 
To pour for you his freshest strain ; 
To you the earliest bluebirds sing, 
Till all your light stems thrill again. 

"The sunshine drapes your limbs with light, 
The rain braids diamonds in your hair, 
The breeze makes love to you at night, 
But still you droop and still despair. 

"Beneath your boughs, at fall of dew, 
By lovers' lips is softly told 
The tale that all the ages through 
Has kept the world from growing old. 



THE TENTH MAN 



329 



"But still, though April's buds unfold, 

Or summer sets the earth aleaf , 
Or autumn pranks your robes with gold! 
You sway and sigh in graceful grief." 

So Number One was a weeping willow of a 
man. He had come into the presence of the 
divine Son of God and the miracle of heaven's 
love had come upon him and he was given a 
new chance at life, but he went with long face 
and gloomy countenance and did not come 
back to thank Jesus or glorify God. How 
much he lost! He would have found the way 
to "Laughter Town" if he had followed Num- 
ber Ten back to Jesus. 

Number Two was a light-minded, self -cen- 
tered youth. When he felt the rush of healing 
sweep through his veins and looked down and 
saw that his flesh had lost its dry scales and 
was as fresh as in his boyhood, he jumped 
and skipt in his great glee and in joyous ebul- 
lition of spirits; but in his light selfishness it 
is doubtful if it ever occurred to him that 
thanks were due not only to Christ but to his 
own self-respect on receiving this great bless- 
ing. His blessing, like some seed, had fallen 
on shallow soil, with the rock close underneath, 



330 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



and it came up quickly but died soon for lack 
of depth. Let us deepen our soil by prac- 
tising genuine appreciation both to God and 
man for every blessing we receive. 

Number Three was of a skeptical turn of 
mind and was greatly astonished at his sudden 
healing and could not at first persuade himself 
that he was really healed. He said, "It looks 
all right, but it probably will not last. If it 
does last, and is really genuine, I'll hunt Jesus 
up and thank him ; but of course it is too good 
to be true!" How many people shut them- 
selves out from all the sweetest joys of life by 
that sad refrain, "It is too good to be true." 
Oh, my friends, that is the wrong spirit in a 
world created by a God who is love and 
ransomed by him who is "the light of the 
world." Instead of saying, "It is too good to be 
true," when some precious blessing has fallen 
on us, we should with grateful courageous 
soul cry, "It is good enough to be true in God's 
bright world!" 

Number Four said, "I have lost so much 
time since I have been a leper, I must get 
back to work. I have no time to follow up the 
great Rabbi and thank him." How many fail 



TEE TENTH MAN 



331 



right there in their Christian life ! They forget 
the glorious friendship with Jesus, and the in- 
spiration and fellowship they might receive 
from his divine and gracious presence, by hur- 
rying off to take their lives again into their own 
feeble hands. The way back to Jesus, in grate- 
ful thanksgiving, is the shortest way to tri- 
umph in every noble life-purpose. 

Number Five prided himself on being a 
hard-headed, practical man, with no foolish 
sentiment. He thought that to go and fol- 
low up Jesus and publicly express his grati- 
tude for the wonderful blessing bestowed upon 
him, would look sentimental and unmanly — 
and so he stayed away. Such people lose out 
of their natures the sweetest juices of human 
living. In family life this very thing is often 
a tragedy — plenty of food for the body, but 
hearts are starved for some expression of love, 
and souls wither and shrivel up for lack of the 
spiritual food which mutual appreciation and 
gratitude lovingly exprest would have sup- 
plied: 

"We starve each other for love's caress; 

We take, but we do not give; 
So easy it seems some soul to bless, 
But we dole our love grudgingly, less and less, 

Till 'tis bitter and hard to live." 



332 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Number Six said, "This famous Rabbi is 
too great a man to care for my feeble thanks; 
He has too great a task on his hands to notice 
whether I am grateful or not." But he was 
mistaken. Jesus did notice. His gentle heart 
was grieved when the nine did not return. No 
one ever gets so great in this world or, we may 
well believe, in any world, that an expression 
of genuine appreciation of a blessing rendered 
will not give an added thrill of joy. If the 
great God finds gratitude the sweetest incense 
of the universe, it is within the power of the 
humblest to bless the highest by the note of 
sincere thanksgiving. 

Number Seven was a proud-spirited man 
and said, "It is too small a thing in return for 
so great a blessing simply to go and say to 
Jesus, 'I thank you.' I will wait until I get 
rich, and then I will buy him a fine present and 
go and thank him." How many people lose 
the greatest blessings of life in that way. They 
told me this story down in Texas: In one of 
their prosperous cities was a saloon man of a 
type much superior in many ways to the man 
who usually conducted that business. He had 
a lovely wife. She had fallen in love with him 



THE TENTH MAN 



333 



and married him before he went into the liquor 
business. She was a genuine Christian woman 
and a devout church member, and her hus- 
band's business shamed and humiliated her. 
But she loved him and loyally clung to him, tho 
she was heart-broken over his sin. When pro- 
hibition was seen to be surely coming, this man 
said to a Christian business man of that city, 
with whom he was friendly, "I am glad it is 
coming. I have laid by plenty of money for 
the rest of my life, and I have bought some lots 
in the finest surburb of the city. I am going 
to build my wife a beautiful home. I will show 
her in the years to come how much I appreciate 
the love and loyalty she has given me while it 
was grieving her heart almost to breaking." 
"But," said the business man to whom this 
statement was made, "it was too late — that 
faithful, heart-broken wife died a week before 
prohibition went into effect." A little con- 
sideration in turning to a clean life while she 
lived would have given her infinite happiness. 
Bring your thanks to your friend and to God 
now. 

Number Eight said, "I'll wait until some day 
when there is a great crowd gathered about 



334 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Jesus, and then I will go and tell the multitude 
what he did, and bring large honor to him." 
But we do not read that he ever got his looked- 
for opportunity to make a great display of his 
gratitude. Xow is the time to speak your word 
of appreciation. We ought to live in such 
a spirit that our gratitude rises from our hearts 
like incense in response to any kindness or 
blessing bestowed upon us. The manna God 
gave Israel spoiled when they tried to hoard it 
up. Stale thanksgiving is not attractive. As 
Paul says about being "instant in prayer," so 
our hearts should also be instant in praise and 
gratitude. 

Number Nine felt very grateful, but he had 
little or no faith in his ability to express his 
gratitude. He said, "Of course I am grateful 
for this wonderful cure ; Jesus must know that ; 
but I am such an awkward creature and I am 
such a bungler in my speech that I would find 
it impossible adequately to express the grati- 
tude I feel." And so he remained away. How 
foolish he was! Why, suppose he had come and 
been so overcome with his emotion that he could 
not have uttered a word, — his grateful face, 
and the tears that filled his eyes would have 



THE TENTH MAN 



335 



touched the heart of Christ with great joy, and 
those who witnessed would have had their 
hearts melted in tenderness, and God would 
have received glory. 

But Number Ten was the wise man — he 
came back. He did not stop to reason about it. 
He had been a poor leper and had heard 
Christ's command. On the way to obey that 
command, healing had come to him. He felt 
like a new man and his flesh was as soft as a 
child's. His leart leaped up in gladness. Sud- 
denly love for the Christ who had healed him 
sprang up in his soul. He must get to Jesus. 
He must show him what had been done. Other 
people must know about it. Christ must have 
the credit for it. So without stopping to think 
what he would say or what he would do when he 
got there, he ran with all his might in the direc- 
tion he had seen Jesus traveling. At last he 
caught sight of him, and his heart was glad. 
Other people were about Jesus, but that made 
no difference, his heart, not his head, was in 
command. At last he reached the Master, and 
he never could have told you how it happened, 
but all that last hundred yards, ever since he 



336 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



caught sight of Jesus, he had been shouting 
aloud as he ran, "Glory be to God, I am healed! 
My leprosy is gone ! I am a well man ! Glory to 
God!" And then he was in the presence of 
J esus. What could he say to him who had so 
blest him? There was nothing good enough to 
say, but in the deep gratitude of his soul he 
threw himself prostrate with his face to the 
ground and his hands on the Master's feet, cry- 
ing, "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you! With 
all my heart and self, I thank you!" And 
Jesus said to him, "Arise, and go thy way: thy 
faith hath made thee whole." This tenth man 
never fully realized what a beautiful thing he 
had done. He had made one of the big bright 
spots in the life of him who was often called 
"the man of sorrows." 

God teach us the beautiful art of expressing 
our appreciation. The world needs it so badly. 
Criticism is very common; let us brighten the 
world by making gracious appreciation of 
every kind word and deed even more common. 
Thereby shall we bless ourselves; we shall 
sweeten our own hearts ; we shall broaden and 
make more Godlike our own souls by studying 



THE TENTH MAN 337 

to be sensitive in response to every blessing be- 
stowed; and we shall bring hope and courage 
and strength and joy to hearts that need, be- 
yond anything else on earth, the divine tonic of 
appreciation. 



THE ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE 
PIONEER 



"He went out, not knowing whither he went." — Heb. 11 : 8. 

A MERICA is preeminently the land of the 
<l \ pioneer. Both Plymouth and James- 
town were camps of the pioneers — those splen- 
did adventurers whose courage faced the ter- 
rors of the Atlantic in sailing vessels, small and 
slow, to find a home and a theater of achieve- 
ment in a new and unknown world. Like 
Abraham they went forth, not knowing whither 
they went. The Pilgrims and the Hollanders 
of New York soon swarmed over the Al- 
leghenies. The Virginians in the new genera- 
tion went on and ventured into Tennessee, and 
Daniel Boone led them on to Kentucky. Then 
great streams of adventurous souls joined in 
that wonderful pioneer movement toward the 
Pacific. Badger Clark has caught the rhythm of 
it well in his interpretation of the spirit of those 
brave and rugged adventurers who passed 
on their spirit from one generation to another 

338 



ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE PIONEER 339 



until they had joined hands in one long sweep 
of conquest from Plymouth and Jamestown 
and the Hudson to Puget Sound, the Columbia 
River, and the Golden Gate : 

"A broken wagon wheel that rots away beside the river, 
A sunken grave that dimples on the bluff above the trail ; 
The larks call, the wind sweeps, the prairie grasses quiver 
And sing a wistful roving song of hoof and wheel 
and sail. 

Pioneers, pioneers, you trailed it on to glory, 
Across the circling deserts to the mountains blue 
and dim. 

New England was a night camp; Old England was 
a story. 

The new home, the true home lay out beyond the rim. 

"You fretted at the old hearth, the kettle and the cricket, 
The fathers' little acres, the wood lot and the pond. 
Ay, better storm and famine and the arrow from the 
thicket, 

Along the trail to wider lands that glimmered out beyond. 
Pioneers, pioneers, the quicksands where you wallowed, 
The rocky hills and thirsty plains — they hardly won 
your heed. 

You snatched the thorny chance, broke the trail that 
others followed 
For sheer joy, for dear joy, of marching in the lead. 

"Your wagon track is laid with steel; your tired dust 
is sleeping. 

Your spirit stalks the valleys where a restive 
nation teems. 
Your soul has never left them in their sowing and 
their reaping. 



340 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



The children of the outward trail, their eyes are 
full of dreams. 
Pioneers, pioneers, your children will not reckon 

The dangers on the dusky ways no man has ever gone. 
They look beyond the sunset where the better 
countries beckon, 
With old faith, with bold faith, to find a wider dawn." 

I. It has been a common thing in talking of 
the pioneer life of America and of pioneering 
in every sense to recount mostly the hardships 
and suffering which were encountered, but that 
is only one side of it. I have a conviction that 
the pioneer is not to be pitied, but to be envied. 

First of all, he is to be envied for being what 
he is — for being of that rugged, vigorous spirit 
that seeks and dares adventure. Of the pio- 
neers of the great Northwest, both from the 
Pilgrim strain from the Northeast and from the 
South, I have known much. Both my parents, 
one from ancestors born in the Virginia settle- 
ments and the other from Scotch pioneers bred 
in the colder North, crossed the plains in 1851 
and 1852 and were married in Oregon, beside 
the beautiful Willamette. And I, being the 
first fruit of that union of two great pioneer 
strains, saw the virgin pioneer life on the last 
great frontier. Those adventurers across the 



ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE PIONEER 341 



plains and over the Rockies by mule team, or, 
slower still, by oxen, were a virile and vital 
group of men and women. A splendid picture 
exists, to which has been given the significant 
title, "The Madonna of the Plains." It has 
caught the spirit of that heroic pioneer 
host that followed the Oregon trail to the sun- 
set-sea. They exemplified the survival of the 
fittest — the cowards did not start and the weak- 
lings died by the wayside. Those who reached 
the great forests and garden valleys beside the 
sunset-sea were brave and strong and buoyed 
by a dauntless spirit. They did not talk of 
hardships or pity themselves. They talked of 
difficulties only to tell how they surmounted 
them, and they rejoiced in the free, imtra ru- 
in el ed life and opportunity which the rich and 
fertile new land, with its hospitable climate, 
gave them. True, they lived in log houses- 
rude and homely indeed, compared with the 
twentieth century mansion with its wealth of 
modern invention and conveniences, but the 
men and women who remember a childhood in 
the old log cabin of those frontier days look 
back to it with a pride that envies no one on 
earth. 



342 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



"The old cabin made of logs, in the oak grove on the hill, 
Where of moms the robins fussed, and of nights the 
whip-o'-will 

Sent its call from afar; where the song of the stream 
Came tip-toeing up the hill and mixed in with my dream 
When I was a little tad, and the red squirrels used to run 
From the trees to the roof when the morning was begun. 
It is gone from the place where it stood on the brow 
Of the hill — it is gone — it is blackened ruins now. 

"I am glad it is gone — it is well that it should go. 
It is gone with the ghosts of old days. I loved them so 
That my eyes blur with tears as I sit and look away 
Past the now to my youth and the joyous yesterday; 
But my lips wear a smile — I am glad it is gone ! 
I believe that it stands out the other side of dawn, 
And the souls of my loved ones will know it evermore, 
And they wait as of old, just within the cabin door. 

"Aye, they wait as of old, those whose love has long 
been dumb; 

They are standing in the door, and they harken if I come 
From the far-singing stream, from the wood on the hill ; 
And they smile as they hear the far-calling whip-o'-will; 
And the light will flare out from south-looking friendly 
panes 

As I drive the cattle home up along the winding lanes. 
It is blackened ruins now to the passer, but to me 
'Tis the ark of the loves of my life that used to be." 

The pioneer not only has a life of constant in- 
terest and adventure, but he has a life of noble 
fellowship. 

II. I have never, anywhere, seen a fellow- 
ship so fine and splendid as among the pioneers 



ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE PIONEER 343 

on the Pacific Coast. It was as near the ideal 
democracy as can be imagined. Xo one was 
thought less of because he had no money or 
property; the only aristocracy known was that 
of character. Neighbors shared with each 
other as in a great brotherhood. If a man were 
sick or disabled, the neighbors got up his win- 
ter's wood, or gathered his crops in the autumn, 
or planted his crops in the spring. If his house 
burned, the whole country came together and 
built him a new one. The common feeling of 
sharing the hardships, the adventures, the joys 
and sorrows of a new land, bound them to- 
gether with a bond stronger than that of kin- 
ship. 

Because it is the nearest to that last great 
pioneer experience, and feels more strongly the 
gripping power of that great brotherly feeling, 
I think there is much truth in Arthur Chap- 
man's song which Westerners love to quote: 

"Out where the hand clasp's a little stronger, 
Out where a smile dwells a little longer. 

That's where the West begins. 
Out where the sun's a little brighter. 
Where the snow that falls is a trifle whiter. 
"Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter, 

There's where the West begins. 



344 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



"Out where the skies are a trifle bluer, 
Out where friendship's a little truer, 
That's where the West begins. 
Out where a fresher breeze is blowing, 
Where there's laughter in every streamlet flowing, 
Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing, 
That's where the West begins. 

"Out where the world is in the making, 
Where fewer hearts with despair are aching, 

That's where the West begins. 
Where there's more of singing and less of sighing, 
Where there's more of giving and less of buying, 
Where a man makes friends without half trying, 

That's where the West begins." 

Many of the noblest souls who have been the 
leaders of our nation in trying times have been 
the output of the splendid growth and develop- 
ment possible in a new land possest and domi- 
nated by the pioneer spirit. Abraham Lincoln, 
who stands before humanity as the supreme 
American, was the product of the spirit and the 
wide opportunity granted by pioneer life. 

The pioneer could not help but grow in 
strength and in breadth of vision as he adven- 
tured into new lands, met difficulties as they 
came, and with splendid self-reliance faced and 
conquered all opposition of soil or forest or 
savage as it arose. 

The pioneer met with splendid rewards. 



ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE PIONEER 345 

He won wide opportunity for fertile fields. He 
was master of his own destiny and carved 
out a heritage for himself and for his children. 
He made his mark deep in the new land and it 
abides to this day. New England to-day is 
largely Irish, but the old Puritan has left his 
ineffaceable mark upon the land and much of 
his spirit still abides and dominates the soil 
where his pilgrim feet trod. The Cavalier and 
the Quaker as well as the old Hollander of 
New Amsterdam have left their footprints 
everywhere along the trail of their adventures. 

But there are still higher realms in which 
the pioneer spirit is essential to the world's ad- 
vancing civilizations and where the same laws 
hold true. Abraham was a pioneer of the faith 
in one true God — the Creator and Preserver 
of the universe. Abraham went into strange 
lands, "not knowing whither he went," with a 
brave, true heart; wherever he pitched his 
traveler's tent, there he built an altar unto the 
one true God. Angels were not unfamiliar 
guests in his camp, and throughout all the 
lands of the Orient he became known as "the 
friend of God." The happiest and most really 



346 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



prosperous man in all the East of his day was 
Abraham, the pioneer. 

So in later days. It has been a common 
thing to speak of the anti-slavery epoch as be- 
ing one of cruel persecution and suffering for 
the Abolitionists, until many see only that side 
of that memorable time. But who in all that 
age lived lives more virile and interesting, lives 
so full of high purpose, of lofty ideals, of great 
and glorious fellowships, as William Lloyd 
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Julia Ward 
Howe, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley, 
James Russell Lowell, Whittier, and a score 
of other great-brained, great-hearted men and 
women? They were the flaming torches of the 
whole Western world of their day, and their 
vital, overflowing zest of life and purpose il- 
luminates a whole generation. These are the 
brightest, grandest, richest, human beings of 
an entire century of humanity. No one pities 
them to-day. They are among the immortals 
— the brightest stars in all the firmament of 
heaven for the ninteenth century. 

So in the temperance reform, just come to 
its glorious triumph in our own land and push- 
ing forward to victory throughout the world 



ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE PIONEER 347 

How insignificant seem the rebuffs and per- 
secutions and hardships met a generation or so 
ago by Neal 'Dow and John P. St. John and 
Frances Willard and John G. Woolley and 
Howard H. Russell compared with the high 
and glorious achievements that will bless the 
world for all time to come through their splen- 
did labors. Take the cause of woman's 
equality in all the arts and privileges and re- 
sponsibilities of life, pioneered by women like 
Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone and Mary 
Livermore and Anna Shaw and a multitude of 
others — they stand to-day the women of fullest 
orb, who lived lives exalted and glorious, bear- 
ing freshest and richest fruitage for all 
humanity for all the years to come. 

God give us pioneers for our own time! 
Never did the world have greater need of 
strong pioneer brain and spirit than in this 
great transition epoch. Here is the human 
race shaking off the green withes of kings, as 
Samson, the young Hebrew giant, broke the 
fetters of the Philistines. Who shall rise out 
of this dark night of chaos with strong brain 
and great heart and holy faith, but with the 
dawn of the new day in his face, ready to 



348 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



pioneer humanity up and out of this Valley of 
Decision to the high tableland of a golden age 
for mankind? Oxenham sings: . 



"The World is in the Valley of Decision; 
It is standing at the parting" of the ways; 
Will it climb the steps of God to realms elysian,— 
Or fall on horror of still darker days? 

"Will it free itself from every shameful shackle? 
Will it claim the glorious freedom of the brave? 
Will it lose the soul of life in this debacle, 
And sink into a mean, dishonored grave? 

"All the world is in the Valley of Decision, 
And out of it there is but one sure road; 
Eyes unsealed can still foresee the mighty vision 
Of a world in travail turning unto God. 

"All the world is in the Valley of Decision. 
Who shall dare its future destiny foretell? 
Will it yield its soul unto the Heavenly Vision, 
Or sink despairing into its own hell?" 



In this great birth-hour of the new epoch of 
the world let us never doubt for a moment that 
the cross on Calvary will yet win its great re- 
ward. God is not mocked. He will not be 
thwarted. What Christianity needs to-day is 
the faith of Abraham to obey God's call and 
go forth as he went, not knowing whither we 



ROMANCE AND JOY OF THE PIONEER 349 

go, but following the guiding hand of him who 
holdeth the worlds in the hollow of his hand. 

While in these critical transition days we 
wait the coming of humanity's pioneers for the 
new and glorious age about to dawn, let us -have 
courage to sing with Sir Owen Seaman: 

"Ye that have faith to look with fearless eyes 
Beyond the tragedy of a world at strife, 
And know that out of death and night shall rise 
The dawn of ampler life. 

"Rejoice, whatever anguish rend the heart, 
That God has given you a priceless dower, 
To live in these great times and have your part 
In freedom's crowning hour. 

"That ye may tell your sons who see the light 
High in the heavens — their heritage to take — 
*I saw the powers of darkness put to flight; 
I saw the morning break'." 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 



"Man became a living soul." — G-en. 2 : 7. 

MAX started as a living soul, but it has not 
been easy to keep his soul alive. There 
are so many things that overlie the soul and 
smother out the inner flame of life. Multitudes 
of people whose powers of body and mind on 
the side that deals with material things seem 
very much alive, who make a great deal of stir 
and noise in the world, are inhabited by — or, to 
speak more correctly, are living, walking, 
breathing coffins for — dead souls. 

How refreshing it is to see a soul entirely 
alive, alive clear through, at every point of pos- 
sible contact and control with the world in 
which they are placed. 

Gladstone was that kind of man. There 
were greater scholars in England than he, there 
were men superior in very many things. But 
he dominated English life for two generations, 

350 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 



351 



and largely influenced the world, because he 
was inhabited by the livest soul in England in 
his day. Sir Sidney Colvin, in his recently 
published Personal Recollections, says that 
while there never was in any community an 
individual man the sense of whose existence 
was so constantly and so forcibly present to the 
general mind as was that of Gladstone to the 
English mind during his long public life, it was 
not merely the prodigious energy he displayed 
and the victories he achieved in legislative and 
administrative spheres that caused him to oc- 
cupy the public consciousness, but it was the 
sense, pervading the whole English world of 
his day, of his possessing in an extraordinary 
degree a heightened intensity of being. Which 
is only another way of saying that the whole 
English-speaking world saw in Mr. Gladstone 
the livest soul of his age. 

Abraham Lincoln was awkward and uncouth 
and unlearned — not an experienced diplomat 
or lawyer like Seward, not a scholar like Chase, 
not an orator like Wendell Phillips, not a 
leader of armies like Grant or Sherman; but 
he had, out of a grossly material time when 
men bargained in human flesh, saved his soul 



352 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



alive, and that live soul in which the torch of 
liberty and humanity never died down, led the 
nation through its Gethsemane like the pillar 
of fire that guided Israel from Egypt. 

Roosevelt was such a man, with a soul alive 
at a hundred angles. In office or out of office 
did not count with him : he was as powerful in 
his leadership of the nation in one place as the 
other, because the whole world of friends or 
foes recognized in him a soul alive with vital 
fire. He led not because he was a great orator, 
or a great writer, or a great executive, or a 
great soldier. No, it was something more ele- 
mental, more divine than that. All America, 
whether they loved or hated him, whether they 
doubted or trusted him, knew he was alive at 
every point of his being. He was all aflame 
with purpose fed from within. 

Now do not let any of us fail of the comfort 
of these illustrations because I have used these 
world characters to illuminate our theme. It is 
as true of men and women who walk in quiet 
streets and shaded country lanes as of these 
men on the larger stage of life, that it is the 
soul within which alone has power to make life 
interesting and splendid — 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 353 

"Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise 
From outward things, whate'er you may believe: 
There is an inmost center in us all, 
Where truth abides in fulness; . 

. and 'to know' 
Rather consists in opening out a way 
Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape, 
Than in effecting entry for a light 
Supposed to be without.*' 

It has been quite popular in some scientific 
circles of our time to deride the deep emotions 
and feelings of the heart as of small account. 
The great Herbert Spencer, however, held that 
the emotions are the masters and the intellect 
the servant. I have been recently reading a 
contemporary scientific essay which quotes with 
approval the lines of the poet who so reverently 
sings : 

"For feeling is a teacher; every dream 

That makes us purer makes us wiser too, 
And every beauty coming on a beam 

Of God's sweet sunlight brings new truth to view. 

"And feeling is a worker; at the base 

Of earth's deep action lies earth's deeper thought ; 
And lower still than thought is feeling's place, 
Which heaves the whole mass duly as it ought." 

Do not for a moment doubt that our theme 
is of the greatest practical importance to the 



354 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



happiness of every one of us. Given a live 
soul, and no path can be so walled about that 
you will not be able to bring to your knowledge 
and consciousness sufficient of the riches of the 
universe to feed your joy. 

Skeptics have sometimes sneered at the Old 
Testament story of Moses meeting with God 
in the burning bush as he followed his sheep on 
the slopes of Mount Horeb. Joseph Edgar 
Chamberlin, however, tells a beautiful story of 
a similar finding of God and his handiwork by 
a little invalid girl who had always been con- 
fined to a poor city house, for the most of the 
time bedridden; who had never been in the 
country or even in a city park, but had been 
taught to read and write. This little girl was 
often visited by a bright, good woman whom 
she called her teacher, and for this teacher she 
wrote a little composition called "Spring." In 
this paper the little girl said that spring came 
first with a gentle flush that was a kind of pink 
and a kind of yellow ; that presently it became 
yellower, and then all at once a beautiful light 
green, which soon turned to a darker green. 
She also said that sometimes spring came ear- 
lier than at other times, and that when it came 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 355 

late it was hard to wait for it; yet it was just as 
nice to have it come late, because when it did 
it was all the more beautiful, and burst out 
first with flowers and then with many leaves 
all at once. The woman who was called 
"teacher" wondered greatly at this little essay 
with its vivid and graphic description, because 
she knew the child had never read of these 
stages of springtime color in any book and she 
was also amazed at the confident feeling and 
passion in the details of springtime by a writer 
who had never seen it. She asked the little girl 
what she meant by writing in that way about 
the spring when she had never seen it. The 
child, her face falling, answered, 4 'But I have 
seen it in the Donelly's bush!" And then the 
visitor saw that, by looking in a small mirror 
that hung on the wall, the bedridden child 
had a view of a neighbor's backyard, and in 
that yard a small willow tree grew, leaning 
away from the brick wall — a tree much stunted 
in height, but yet stocky and thrifty, and bear- 
ing a luxurious mass of pendent leaves. Here 
was all nature, and God with it, in a bush. The 
spring had been there and none of it left out ; 
for all of the abounding spring that did not 



356 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



come to the little willow tree was as naught to 
the keen and reverent eyes of the child. 

I thought, as I read that sweet little story, 
how many great, robust owners of thousands 
of acres of forest and hills and valleys traversed 
by babbling brooks or sweeping rivers have 
seen the miracle of God's glory in springtime 
come and go a score of times and yet never 
have had a tithe of its inspiring story. Yet it 
was caught by the little lame girl in her narrow 
room through a handbreadth of mirror. Her 
soul was alive. 

How I would thank God if I could bring to 
each one of you the message for you personally 
that you need out of this great theme ! 

Some of you are making the great mistake, 
I fear, of gaining things — houses, lands, bonds, 
or honors, or positions — at the expense of the 
prosperity, the very life, of your soul. It is 
such a pitiful tragedy. Here is a bright man, 
good body, keen mind, inherited ability, who 
marries a charming young girl, and they start 
out with all the glow of youth and the gladness 
of living as mates in God's good world. Soon 
our hero is immersed in the world's work: his 
profession or his business absorbs him; it goes 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 357 

home with him and makes the evening fireside 
heavy and dull: and love that filled his soul for 
a brief epoch with higher ideals and nobler joy 
than he had ever known is allowed to die down 
about the home altar. He tells his wife that 
when he has won his place and position, has 
achieved his success, he will make up to her 
for all her lonely evenings. Alas ! how impos- 
sible ever to make up for losses like that. 
When the children come and the miracle of 
childhood fills the home, the worn and tired 
man has no time, he says, to get acquainted 
with his children and enter into fellowship with 
them, but after a little he will — as soon as he 
has won a competency and has time and money 
to rest, then he is going to make up to his wife 
for all her lonely, loveless years and rejoice in 
the glad fellowship with his sons and daughters. 
Oh, how many tragedies like that I have come 
in touch with in my experience as a minister! 
When the time comes to retire, the mate of his 
youth has no longer any flame of response even 
if he had the power to make the appeal for her 
love, and his children have gone their own way 
and made their own friends, and he has neither 
the ability nor the key to reach their hearts. 



358 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



His soul is dead, overlaid by his lifetime 
struggle after dross, when the true gold of life 
was at his hand for the taking in his own home. 
There are no greater tragedies than those, and 
none more common. The younger Margaret 
E. Sangster, following in the footsteps of her 
sainted mother, sings of this sort of tragedy 
with keen poetic insight: 

"I started out in a cloak of pride, 
With talent, too, that I did not hide; 
I started out on Life's stony road, 
Ambition's weight was my only load; 
And the way seemed fair in the dawn's first glow, 
And I hurried — ran — for I did not know! 

"Love smiled from a garden by the way, 
And called to me, but I would not stray 
From the road that stretched like a ribbon white, 
Up endless hills to an endless night. 
Love smiled at me, but I pushed ahead, 
And Love fell back in the garden — dead, 
But I did not care as I hastened by, 
And I did not pause for regret or sigh . . . 
The road before was a path of hope, 
And every hill with its gentle slope 
Led up to the heights I had dreamed and prayed 
To reach some day. 
Ah, I might have stayed 
With Love and Youth in the garden gay, 
That smiled at me from beside the way. 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 



359 



"I plodded up, and the gentle hills 
Grew hard to climb, and the laughing 1 rills 
"Were torrents peopled with sodden forms; 
The sky grew black with the hint of storms, 
And rocks leaped out, and they bruised my feet, 
And faint I grew in the fever heat. 
(But ever on led the path that lay 
As gray as the dust in the waning day.) 
My back was bent, and my heart was sore, 
And the cloak of pride that I grandly wore 
Was rent and patched for all eyes to see — 
Ambition, talent seemed naught to me . . . 
But I struggled on till I reached the top, 
For only then did I dare to stop! 

(l I stood on the summit gazing down, 
And the earth looked sordid and dull and brown, 
And neutral-tinted and neutral-souled; 
And all of life seemed a story told, 
And the only spot that was bright to see 
Was a patch of green that had bloomed for me 
Where a garden lived in a spring long fled, 
When Love stood smiling — 

But Love was dead!" 

Let us close our sermon with a cheerier note. 
We may keep our souls alive. Jesus says, "The 
kingdom of God is within you," and Paul de- 
clares that its substance is joy and peace and 
true goodness. He also declares that the joy 
of the Lord is our strength. Emerson meant 
the same when he said : 

"Nothing will supply the want of sunshine in peaches, and 



360 THE WINDS OF GOD 

to make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness 
of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely pleased you are 
nourished. The joy of the spirit indicates strength — all 
healthy things are sweet-tempered. Genius WQrks in sport, 
and goodness smiles to the last ; and for the reason that who- 
ever sees the law which distributes things does not despond, 
but is animated by great desires and endeavors. He who 
desponds betrays that he has not seen it." 

How good it is to live in God's bright, puls- 
ing, thrilling world, all aquiver with vitality — 
with a live soul in you to rejoice in its beauties 
and glories ! 

The man who keeps his soul alive wins even 
when he loses. There is a beautiful glimpse of 
this happy thought in a delicious little story by 
Wm. J. Locke, called "The Song of Life," in 
his new volume of short stories. With charac- 
teristic grace and beauty he tells of an old 
musician, popular in his day as a violinist, who 
all his life long had held as his supreme am- 
bition the purpose to compose a great sonata. 
He felt that he had a divine message to pro- 
claim to the world, a song of life itself, a revela- 
tion. It was life indestructible, eternal. It 
was the seed that grew into the giant tree. It 
was the kiss of lovers that, when they were dead 
and gone, lived immortal on the lips of grand- 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 361 



children. It was in his brain and heart — the 
cosmic chant, the rhythm of existence, telling 
of things as only music could tell them, and as 
no musician had ever told them before. It was 
the great dream of his life, but he lacked the 
genius to tell it so as to bring out his dream to 
the recognition of the world. He grew old, 
and to keep the wolf from the door, taught 
pupils from humble homes. Providence direc- 
ted to his humble attic studio a rare young 
genius in music who drank his loving teaching 
as a thirsty flower drinks rain, and became a 
famous composer. Finally the day came when 
this beloved pupil was to have his supreme op- 
portunity to show the greatness of his powers. 
His success was phenomenal — he took the 
whole musical world by storm: and while this 
splendid symphony was being given the old 
teacher fainted. The next day the now famous 
pupil went to his faithful teacher's studio to 
lay his honors at the old man's feet, and found 
the studio empty; but on the desk he found the 
old man's draft of the very symphony which 
had won his own world-wide fame the day be- 
fore, except for the touches the young man's 
own genius had given it. It seems the young 



3G2 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



man had bought in a second-hand store a piece 
of music, impossible as it was, but in which he 
saw the great possibilities. He supposed it 
was from the hand of some long dead unknown 
composer and had bought it and found in it the 
foundation of his own greatness — and now 
when he found that he had seemingly won his 
great fame at the expense of his old friend he 
was heart-broken and feared to meet him. As 
he stood thus, overwhelmed with grief, the old 
musician burst into the room with a shout of 
joy. He rushed forward and grasped the 
young man in his arms and kissed him on the 
cheeks and cried: 

"You have seen it. You have seen the miracle; the mir- 
acle of the good God. Oh, I am happy ! My son, my son ! 
I am the happiest of old men. Ah !" He shook the young 
man tremulously by both shoulders, and looked at him with 
a magical light in his old eyes. "You are . . . really 
a prodigy — I have thought and you have executed. Santa 
Maria !" he cried, raising his hands and eyes to heaven. "I 
thank you for this miracle that has been done ! I spent my 
life on it, my blood, my tears, and it is a thing of nothing, 
nothing. It is a thing of wind and noise; but by a miracle 
of God I breathed it into your spirit and it grew — and it 
grew into all I dreamed — all that I dreamed and could not 
express. It is my 'Song of Life' sung as I could have sung 
it if I had been a great genius like you. And you have taken 
my song from my soul, from my heart, and all the sublime 
harmonies that got no farther than this dull head you have 
put down in immortal music." 



KEEPING THE SOUL ALIVE 363 



Who will say that the old musician was not 
a conqueror in the battle of life. He had kept 
his soul alive. God give us the same glorious 
wisdom! Let us give the world all the in- 
spiring music there is in us to give, and pray 
God that those who come after us shall render 
a still more splendid paean to him! 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 



"We would see Jesus." — John 12 : 21. 

IT was a favorite theory of Emerson that 
every great institution was the lengthening 
shadow of some great man. Mohammed lived 
and thought and saw visions and taught, and 
Mohammedanism is his lengthening shadow. 
A man named John Wesley lived and studied 
and thought and saw visions and taught, and 
warmed his heart: he preached and traveled, 
by sailing vessel and on horseback, until his 
flaming evangel was heard to the frontiers 
of the world, and Methodism is his lengthening 
shadow. All great religious movements have 
a similar story. 

So Christianity as a whole, exprest in many 
great churches and denominations covering 
the earth with their activity, is the lengthening 
shadow of Jesus Christ who was born in a man- 
ger, crucified, buried in Joseph's tomb, and, 
risen from the dead, is alive for evermore. 

364 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 365 



There could be no more important study for 
the Christian than the personality of Jesus, 
for Christianity is peculiarly a personal re- 
ligion. It is not a system of philosophy or 
theology, tho vast systems of philosophy and 
theology have been built up about it, until they' 
seem sometimes so to hide the face of Jesus 
that we feel like crying with Mary Magdalene, 
"They have taken away my Lord, and I know 
not where they have laid him." 

The religion of Christ is personal. All the 
appeals of Jesus are for personal followers, 
personal service, personal friendship and 
loyalty. He passed by the fishermen who 
were mending their nets and said to them, 
"Come ye after me, and I will make you fishers 
of men." There is not a word about creed or 
dogma — it is a personal appeal for a personal 
following. 

This personal following after Jesus has led 
to the rise and growth of all these great lines 
of religious thought, these great bodies of re- 
ligious people, who march under different de- 
nominational banners, tho all recognize a com- 
mon allegiance to the personal Christ as their 
captain and Leader and Savior. 



366 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



This vast variety of views about Jesus does 
not arise from the sinfulness of men, as some 
have supposed, but rather from the many-sided 
personality of Christ. It is like getting a view 
of a vast mountain : If you look at Mt. Rainier 
from Seattle, it gives you one impression. If 
you gaze on it from Tacoma, it is quite a dif- 
ferent picture, and if you cross the Cascades 
and look back at it from the Yakima Valley, 
you have an entirely new vision. So the mar- 
velous personality of Jesus, whose dome reaches 
up to the throne of God, whose base reaches 
down to the humblest stratum of our humanity, 
does not, in the nature of things can not, give 
the same impression to all who behold him, to 
all who are equally loyal to him and draw from 
him the spiritual sustenance and maintenance 
of their soul's life. 

I have chosen this theme to invite you to 
look at Jesus from my viewpoint. No doubt 
some one else may be able to show you a very 
different view which is equally true to life, but 
this is my view — the great vision from my 
standpoint of sight. 

I. In my view of Jesus he is always young. 
His mother was a healthy, outdoor, country 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 367 

girl who brought to her son on his human side 
clean red blood from an honest ancestry. He 
had the health of a youth who is much in the 
open air and lives on plain food. We know he 
was a strong baby, for he first saw the light in 
a manger in a stable and seemed to get no hurt 
from the hard surroundings. He grew up in 
the country, learned the plants and the trees 
and the birds and the wild animals, their names 
and their habits. He grew up a working boy, 
helping his carpenter foster father at such 
carpentering as belonged to those days. He 
was a vigorous boy, athletic and manly. He 
stuck to his work as a carpenter until he was 
thirty years old, then went forth to his public 
ministry, which lasted but three years, a fine 
specimen of manhood. He could walk or talk 
or work all day and sleep on the mountain at 
night, resting on the ground with only the sky 
overhead, without shelter and without fear of 
ill effects from it. This square-shouldered 
young country carpenter, with eager, brave 
eyes, yet with a volcano in them when aroused, 
with a voice as sweet as the tones of a meadow 
lark but with power to command when quick- 
ened and thrilled by emotion, is my Christ as 
he enters on his public ministry. 



368 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Jesus was the most wonderful democrat 
among the men of his day — a great many 
classes of people were attracted to him. And 
those same classes are still attracted to him 
when we are wise enough to show them the real 
manliness of the Man of Galilee. Sufferers 
have always been peculiarly drawn to Jesus 
and have been comforted by him. "Oh," you 
say, "that is natural. It is because he was such 
a great sufferer himself on the cross." I do 
not believe that is all. Is it not rather that 
Christ was a great sufferer who suffered with- 
out whining about it; who suffered without 
pitying himself ; even on the way to the cross 
he said to his friends, "Weep not for me." He 
never gave up to suffering: his purpose in life 
was so great and noble and sublime that suf- 
fering was only an insignificant incident of life 
and not the big thing. He knew he was going 
to Jerusalem to be abused and rejected and 
crucified, yet Luke says, "he steadfastly set 
his face toward Jerusalem." He did not flinch. 
He was vital, full of the vigor and glory of 
young manhood, enjoying life as only a divine 
mind with a pure heart in a healthy body 
thirty-three years old can enjoy it; yet he set 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 369 

his countenance like a flint toward Jerusalem 
and went with a smile on his face, opening blind 
eyes, comforting sufferers, and leaving a path 
strewn with the fragrance of good will and love 
every step of the way. That is what makes 
Jesus the supreme comforter for sufferers in 
every age. 

Poor people liked Jesus. "The common 
people heard him gladly,'' and they still like 
him when they get a true vision of him. Not 
because he was poor — there is nothing attrac- 
tive about that — but because he triumphed over 
all the ordinary limitations of poverty. He 
never lost his courage, or his self-respect, or 
his dignity or simplicity or manliness, because 
of his poverty. He never fawned, or flattered, 
or catered because he w r as poor. His life and 
character showed that money, or the lack of 
it, has no power to make or unmake real man- 
hood. He was a living example of his own 
declaration: "A man's life consisteth not in 
the abundance of the things which he pos- 
sesseth." 

A great many rich people were attracted to 
Jesus because, notwithstanding the fact that 
he truthfully said of himself, "The foxes have 



370 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



holes, the birds of the air have nests ; but the 
Son of man hath not where to lay his head," 
his life was evidently much richer than their 
own. Money and worldly possessions in the 
mind of most people mean satisfaction, content- 
ment, happiness, freedom, and peace. Jesus 
had these in greater fullness than any man of 
his day. He was, in spite of his lack of the 
wealth which they had been taught to prize, the 
richest man they knew, and they sought to 
learn his secret. 

Sinful people, whose lives were offensive to 
the moral standards of their day, flocked to 
him because, while his goodness condemned 
their sin, there was about him an atmosphere 
of sympathy and helpfulness as healing and 
wholesome as the sunshine or the breath of the 
sea. They were drawn from their sins to 
Jesus because his goodness was not hard or 
cynical, but was sweetened with love and 
mercy. "Like as a father pitieth his children" 
or as a mother comforteth her child, so Christ's 
goodness went forth ministering to sinful souls, 
seeking to heal and to save. 

All good people loved Jesus because of his 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 871 



openness of mind and heart and his complete 
genuineness and sincerity. 

Then a great many who were not very clearly 
defined in any of these classes liked Jesus, and 
were strongly attracted by the remarkable 
magnetism of his personality. He was splen- 
did looking, he had the look of power, he was 
wittjr in a wholesome, glad way. He was a 
brilliant conversationalist, his keen mind went 
to the core of every question. He was happy, 
sympathetic, and gracious. He was popular 
as a dinner guest — wherever he sat with his in- 
teresting talk, his glowing countenance, his 
flashing eager eye, and contagious joyous 
laughter, that place was the head of the table. 
He was a social lion until the classes who 
hated him aroused the forces that finally put 
him to death. For there were certain elements 
of society and government that naturally and 
irrevocably became arrayed against him and 
pursued him stedfastly to the death. 

Caste hated him because he stood for man- 
hood. Priestcraft hated him because he stood 
for an open road to the heart of God Autoc- 
racy hated him because he stood for the broth- 
erhood of humanity. He was the first great 



372 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



herald of what we have come to call "democ- 
racy" in our modern world. He did not stand 
as a partizan for any class of men as a class. 
He did not stand for poor men or rich men, 
as such. He did not stand for ignorant men 
or learned men, as such. He did not stand 
for bad men or for good men, as such. He 
stood for men. Every man, rich or poor, 
learned or ignorant, good or bad, has his no- 
blest ideal and his supreme advocate in Jesus 
Christ. 

Both ecclesiastical and secular politicians 
hated Jesus and feared him because the aggres- 
sive righteousness and justice which he 
preached and the character of manhood he pro- 
claimed were disturbers of the established or- 
der. Pilate, with many protests and washing 
of his hands before the public, finally crucified 
him as a political measure. 

II. Now we have seen the human side of the 
personality of this democratic Christ. Let us 
look at the divine side of this most glorious 
character in all history. To me it is self-evident 
that you can not account for the personality of 
Jesus merely by saying that he is a good man: 
to accept his divine nature in a human body is 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 



373 



to believe only one miracle, to try to explain 
the marvelous personality of Christ as simply 
a good man involves you in the acceptance of 
many miracles. If you find it hard to under- 
stand the divine character of Jesus, get Horace 
Bushnell's little book entitled The Character 
of J esus. I think it will clear away your diffi- 
culties to your great comfort and blessing. 

Bushnell brings out, with graphic clearness, 
what Paul means when he speaks of Christ as, 
"God manifest in the flesh"; and again when 
he says, "God was in Christ, reconciling the 
world unto himself." 

Let me suggest some of these phases of the 
divine character of Christ's personality that 
are to me full of assurance: 

The mental and spiritual personality of 
Jesus is utterly without flaw, above and beyond 
criticism. This can not be said of the best men 
who have ever lived. It was not true of his 
human body. Strong and athletic as was the 
body of Christ, it was subject to hunger and 
thirst and weariness, and was delicately sensi- 
tive to pain: but on the mental and spiritual 
side he had the serenity and calmness of God. 
He had red blood. Passion of the highest 



374 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



power sometimes exprest itself in indig- 
nation or tears; but it was never for himself, 
it was always the moving of a great, divine 
soul for others. There is an old saying that, 
"No man is a hero to his valet." Which means 
that a great occasion like the leading of a for- 
lorn hope or martyrdom for a great cause will 
nerve a brave soul to the supreme patience and 
fortitude necessary to meet fate with compos- 
ure; but the petty annoyances of every-day 
life will fret and chafe the spirit of even great 
men and make their conduct anything but 
heroic. There was nothing of that about 
Jesus. To the very last the men who saw every 
detail of his daily life were the men who hon- 
ored him most and were surest of his divine 
personality. 

Christ is the greatest spiritual teacher the 
world has ever known, and yet he does not 
come from the world's schools. His neighbors 
who knew his whole outward life were aston- 
ished and could not understand the source of 
his wisdom. In Matt. 13: 54 we hear them 
asking, "Whence hath this man this wisdom?" 

Compare Shakespeare with Christ and this 
marvelous difference between Jesus and other 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 375 



men is at once apparent. Shakespeare is re- 
garded as perhaps the most original of men 
and also as of the class of self-made men, yet 
all his work is tinged with human learning. 
The chief glory of Shakespeare is that so much 
of what is great in history and historic charac- 
ter lives and appears in his dramatic creations. 
He is sometimes called the high priest of 
human nature. But Christ, "who knew what 
was in man," understanding human nature bet- 
ter than Shakespeare, derives no help from his- 
toric examples. He is, rather, the High Priest 
of the divine nature, speaking as one who has 
come, as he claimed to have come, as a messen- 
ger from God, and having no need to borrow 
from the world. It is impossible to find that 
human knowledge imparted anything whatever 
to the wisdom of Jesus. His teachings, as 
Bushnell aptly puts it, are just as full of divine 
nature as Shakespeare's are of human nature. 

Jesus himself said, "I am the light of the 
world," and he makes the world luminous by 
his words. When you read the words of Jesus 
you are made conscious of a sense of the pres- 
ence of God, just as when you step out of the 
house on the morning of a clear day you are 



376 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



made conscious of the presence of the warmth 
and light of the sun. 

Jesus was the world's greatest Reformer, 
and yet he had none of the frailties and faults 
that have been common to reformers. Usually 
they are not well-rounded characters: many 
become bitter and harsh and unlovable because 
of unjust criticism of their work and unfair 
opposition. They often become one-sided and 
opinionated: sometimes as sharp as a needle, 
but no broader than a needle. Jesus faced un- 
fair and cruel criticism, unjust and hypocritical 
opposition, and yet went serenely on his way to 
scourging and crucifixion ; suffering no deterio- 
ration of his temper or character, but retaining 
in his nature all the spiritual graces. Call over 
the whole list of graces which Paul mentions in 
his letter to the Galatians: "The fruit of the 
spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kind- 
ness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self- 
control." Where did Paul get that list? He 
learned them all at the feet of Jesus. He saw 
them in the face of Christ and heard them in 
the heavenly music of his voice. 

The courage of Jesus was not the ordinary 
courage of brave men but rather the courage of 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 377 



God. He seems not to have had the conscious- 
ness of fear as the bravest men have. He never 
shirked or dodged any danger. He did not 
shrink from saying and doing things that he 
knew meant death. 

He was never annoyed by beggars. He was 
never afraid of lepers ; but put his loving hands 
upon them and healed them. He had no fear 
of fevers or contagious diseases of any sort. 
He did not shrink from the maniac of his day, 
whom every one, even those thus afflicted, be- 
lieved to be possest of demons; he found joy 
in relieving their suffering. He said, "My 
meat and drink is to do the will of him that sent 
me," and tho we know his supreme joy was to 
transform the souls of men and women, yet he 
was "touched by the feeling of our infirmities." 
So greatly was he touched that among the 
works of mercy in connection with which he 
gave us precious promises of reward were the 
feeding of the hungry, the clothing of the 
naked, and the visiting of those who were sick 
and imprisoned. He sent forth his disciples 
with the commission not only to preach the 
kingdom of God, but to heal the sick. 

We often hear men say, "Ah, could we but 



378 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



see him upon the streets of our cities, as the 
Bible says he was in those Galilean cities, doing 
those miracles of healing !" They may see him 
in ten thousand hospitals wherever his disciples 
dwell. They may see him in the garb of the 
Christian deaconesses and district nurses in 
the slums of our cities. They may see him in 
the medical missions of heathen lands. They 
may see him on the battlefields of France and 
Belgium, where thousands lie sleeping because 
they gave their lives for human liberty, and in 
the Christian love which solaced their dying 
hours. They may see him in the weary hours 
of some overworked employer striving to do 
the Christian thing in solving the profit system 
for his employees. They may see him in the 
work of our public schools with education for 
all — rich and poor alike, and in the employ- 
ment of doctors, dentists, and nurses in those 
public schools as is now becoming common, 
to look after each and every child, in order 
that the child of the poor man may have 
an equal opportunity physically with the 
child of the rich; and that no child, rich 
or poor, shall be allowed through lack of under- 
standing or inability on the part of a parent to 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 379 

grow up hampered and bound physically and 
mentally by the ills common to childhood, or 
his years shortened by the ignorance of his 
elders; but that the whole race may be lifted 
up and improved by the care of all alike. Oh, 
this is a great day for the world, when the spirit 
of democracy or brotherhood (call it what 
you may, it is the spirit of Jesus Christ), ' 
prompts us to seek for the child of the poorest 
neighbor the same happy, healthy childhood, 
the same privileges and opportunities that we 
seek for our own. In the love that prompts 
such service to humanity you may see the face 
of Jesus. 

"It were not hard, He says, to see Him, 

If we would only serve; 
'He that doeth the will of Heaven, 
To him shall knowledge and sight be given'. 
While for His presence we sit repining, 
Never we see His countenance shining; 
They who toil where His reapers be 
The glow of his smile may always see, 

And their faith can never swerve. 
It were not hard, He says, to see Him, 

If we would only serve." 

Another evidence of the divine courage of 
Jesus is that he had no fear of scandal; he paid 
no attention to the cry that he was the guest of 



330 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



a sinner, and went to dinner with publicans. 
He did not shun harlots, but talked with them 
on the public street with the same naturalness 
and simplicity and kindness that he would talk 
with the most honored matron of the town. He 
walked the wav of life not as a man, but with 
the authority and nobility of God. 

The most glorious hope of humanity is that 
as the divine nature was incarnated in Jesus, 
so Christ can live again manifesting himself in 
us. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, says, 
"It pleased God to reveal himself in me." And 
to the Colossians Paul writes of " Christ in you, 
the hope of glory." What a glorious hope, that 
we may so surrender ourselves to the will of 
God and the service of humanity that the 
matchless personality of Jesus shall live in our 
hearts and minds and beautify and glorify our 
lives. 

As Doctor Clow points out in one of his fine 
sermons, it is not beyond the range of our hu- 
man experience to have one personality invade 
and possess another. Browning with charac- 
teristic spiritual insight illustrates this possibil- 
ity in his poem "By the Fireside." He portrays 
a husband and wife sitting by the open fire in 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 381 

the evening. They have lived long together in 
pure and loving fellowship. They are growing 
old. The husband tells the wife how beauti- 
fully her personality and character have en- 
tered into his : 

"My own, see where the years conduct, 
At first 'twas something our two souls 

Should mix as mists do : each is sucked 
In each now : on the new stream rolls, 

Whatever rocks obstruct." 

That is the husband's first statement of this 
strange possession of his own personality by 
the woman he loves. He recalls the closer and 
more tender intimacy of spirit with spirit as life 
went on and finally passes to the scene of per- 
fect consummation. It came as they stood at 
the close of day on a rustic bridge over a quiet 
stream: 

"A moment after, and hands unseen 

"Were hanging the night around us fast; 
But we knew that a bar vras broken between 

Life and life : we were mixed at last 
In spite of the mortal screen." 

And so it is when we walk with God through 
our friendship with Jesus, surrendering the 
guidance of life to him. He is in us the hope 



382 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of glory, and his spirit controls our conduct 
and is revealed in us, to the blessing of all the 
world about us. 

It would make me very glad if I might in- 
spire the imagination of some of you who have 
lived all your lives within hearing of Christ's 
voice, and within sight of his face in Bible and 
music and literature and art and faithful 
Christlike living of some true saint, and yet 
have never really seen Jesus. Oh, that I might 
give you a glimpse of his glorious ability to lift 
you out of the humdrum of mere material life 
into the divine fellowship that will make your 
life infinitely more interesting and splendid. 

When I follow Jesus during his three years 
of ministry and see him feed the hungry, heal 
the blind and the deaf and the crippled: when 
I watch him as he makes the palsied arm whole, 
quiets the fevered brow, and cleanses the loath- 
some leper : when I stand by him at the grave 
of Lazarus, and at the bier of the widow's son 
in the town of Nain, I admire and wonder : but 
when I see him lay hold on a soul, such as the 
poor harlot Mary Magdalene, or the hard miser 
Zacchaeus, and lift them out of lust and greed 
into goodness and honor: when I see him re- 



THE PERSONALITY OF JESUS 383 



deeming sinners like these from the foul slime 
where they grovel without hope, and trans- 
forming them into the purity of heaven and 
the fellowship of the skies, I fall on my knees 
and cry, "My Lord and my God." 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 



"Be strong."— 1 Cor. 16 : 13. 

A WISE man of old said that the glory of 
young men is their strength. Is it not 
true of all men? God needs strong men to do 
his work in the world. Xot only men strong 
in muscle and brawn, tho those are not to be 
spoken of disparagingly, but also men of 
power in intellect and will and feeling. "The 
world needs full-rounded, well-equipped 
strength of manhood to do the full meed of ser- 
vice that the world must have in this great 
crisis in which we live. Maltby Babcock's little 
song needs to be soimded in the ears of men 
everywhere to-day: 

''Be strong. 
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift. 
We have hard work to do and loads to lift; 
Shun not the straggle, face it, 'tis God's gift, 
Be strong." 

384 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 



385 



We are fortunate in our text to have sur- 
rounding it Paul's undoubted idea of the char- 
acteristics of a strong man — the sources from 
which strength in manhood can always be had. 

I. Paul suggests that the strong man is the 
alert man — "Watch ye!" The man who is 
always awake about his work, always watching 
for the very best knowledge he can find for his 
profession or his business, is the man who will 
grow strong. He is never willing that any one 
should know more about the particular work he 
has in hand than he knows. He wants to know 
the latest thing in science or research of any 
kind connected with his work. If he is a busi- 
ness man, his associates in the street will say of 
him, perhaps, "He is a live wire." If he is a 
statesman or a poet or a prophet, the world will 
say of him, "He is a man of vision." 

The man who grows strong has the air and 
spirit of expectancy. He is ready for the 
adventure of the new day and the new advance 
of life. This is especially true in the spiritual 
world, where we are dealing with character, and 
with the opportunities and privileges of service 
to humanity. Some poet sings : 



386 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



" 'Tis not for man to trifle ; life is brief, 

And sin is here. 
Our age is but the falling of a leaf, 

A dropping tear. 
We have no time to sport away the hours, 
All must be earnest in a world like ours. 

"Not many lives, but only one have we, 

One, only one, 
How earnest should that one life be, 

That narrow span; 
Day after day spent out in blessed toil, 
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil." 

Paul himself is a fine illustration of that 
eagerness of expectancy that is never satisfied 
with the present but is always looking to the 
future with earnest hope of still nobler achieve- 
ment. He is the man whose golden age is never 
behind him but is always looming up ahead of 
him in splendid anticipation. Hence, we hear 
Paul saying: "This one thing I do, forgetting 
those things which are behind, and reaching 
forth unto those things which are before, I 
press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus." 

All this suggests to us that the strong man 
is a growing man. And that power or deter- 
mination of the will to be alert and eager for 
new sources of strength, new impulse, makes 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 387 



the great difference in men as to weakness or 
strength. The man who never allows life to 
become stale, who never loses his curiosity of 
mind, and has the courage to put every bit of 
knowledge he attains into action, is the man 
who grows in strength. David Grayson says 
that there is nothing strange about great men ; 
they are like us, only deeper, higher, broader. 
They think as we do, but they are more eager, 
have more intensity ; they suffer as we do, but 
more keenly ; they love as we do, but more ten- 
derly. By which he means just what we have 
been saying, that it is the eager, expectant man 
who gains strength and becomes great. I think 
this is very encouraging to each of us. This 
source of strength is within arm's reach of 
every one. It is needed only that you set your 
alarm clock. Watch, keep awake, to catch the 
miracle of opportunity every day of your life 
for the highest things, the noblest chance for 
service, the truest helpfulness. If we put into 
action the thoughts and vision God gives us, 
we shall grow in strength. 

II. Paul's second characteristic of a strong 
man is faith. "Stand fast in the faith." I 
think Paul meant nothing narrow by that. He 



388 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



meant, no doubt, first of all, faith in God and 
Christ and the great spiritual truths. But un- 
doubtedly Paul meant also that the man of 
faith was a man who was stedfast in the great 
principles of truth that had come to him as a 
Christian, who would not sell his principles, 
whom nothing could bribe from standing fast 
in the thing that he believed to be right, who 
would go, as Paul himself did, into Nero's dun- 
geon or to the executioner's block rather than 
deny his faith. To die seemed to Paul very 
much easier than to be false. Paul did not feel 
that it was necessary for him to live, but it was 
imperative for him to be a good man and true. 

How different that attitude is from the 
superficial sophistries we sometimes hear. 
Here are some modern verses that are not too 
scornful: 

" 'A man must live !' we justify 
Low shift and trick to treason high, 
A little vote for a little gold, 
To a whole senate bought and sold, 
With this self-evident reply. 

"But is it so ? Pray tell me why 
Life at such cost you have to buy? 

In what religion were you told 

'A man must livef 
There are times when a man must die. 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 389 

"Imagine for a battle cry 

From soldiers with a sword to hold, 
From soldiers with a flag unrolled, 
The coward's whine, this liar's lie, 
'A man must live !' " 

I suppose there was no men of his age who 
held the romantic admiration of the young men 
of the world and of the most powerful men of 
all ages more than the man who is known as 
Chinese Gordon, that remarkable English sol- 
dier and statesman and Christian, who was 
martyred at Khartum. Huxley, who differed 
from him so widely in Christian faith, used to 
speak of him as one of the two greatest men he 
ever met, a man of a sort of divine and super- 
human unselfishness. Robert Speer, in one of 
his great lectures in his series on The M arks 
of a Mart; gives the most interesting estimate 
of what it was that made him great. He tells 
of three monuments to Chinese Gordon. First, 
there is the statue that stands in Trafalgar 
Square, with the poor, sad face turned toward 
the help that was not to come.' Then there 
is that magnificent inscription on the stone in 
St. Paul's Cathedral in London: it describes 
Gordon as a man "who at all times and every- 
where gave his strength to the weak, his sub- 



390 



TEE WINDS OF GOD 



stance to the poor, his sympathy to the suffer- 
ing, and his heart to God." But there is another 
monument finer still. It is a life figure of 
Chinese Gordon seated on a dromedary, 
planted in what will some day be the center of 
the city of Khartum. It is now in the great 
gardens just back of the palace. And in that 
great statue the face of Gordon is not turned 
toward the Nile, by which he might have es- 
caped; it is not turned toward Egypt, through 
which help too late was on its way ; it is turned, 
with the face of the dromedary on which he is 
mounted, out toward the great desert whose 
voice he alone heard, whose opportunities he 
alone saw. That, as Newbolt puts it in his 
lines on Gordon, was the real greatness of the 
man: 

"For this man was not great by gold or royal state, 
By sharp sword or knowledge of earth's wonder: 
But, more than all his race, he saw life face to face, 
And heard the still, small voice above its thunder." 

Oh, my friends, that must be our great source 
of strength as well as Gordon's, to look into 
any desert of life and listen with the inner ear 
of the soul until we hear the still, small voice : 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 391 



"So many ways in the world — ah me ! 

That a man may follow, a. woman travel 
So many paths, whatever they be, 
Wherever they go, that none unravel, 
So many roads where we win or lose, 
So many ways so hard to choose 
So much that's hidden, so little light — 
The only thing, whatever we do, 
Is to follow the voice of the soul that's true-— 
The still, small voice that leads us right." 

This is the voice that Moses heard out of the 
burning bush; the voice that Elijah heard 
above the storm in his mountain cave on 
Horeb; the voice that Chinese Gordon heard 
in his last hour. When we, too, listen to God, 
and stand stedfast in the faith in God who 
is back of and over all things, our weakness 
is transformed into strength. 

III. Paul's third characteristic of the strong 
man is gameness. "Quit you like men!" says 
Paul. How does that sound in your ears? 
Don't you hear Paul saying in the language 
of the ball game, or the market-place, "Be a 
game sport ! Don't whine ! If you are knocked 
down in the game of life, don't take it lying 
down ; get up again ; rub the sand out of your 
eyes, and go ahead with a game smile on your 
face and win the victory that is yet to come!" 



392 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



I have no doubt but this language would as- 
tonish Paul, yet I feel very sure that he would 
agree that it is a fair interpretation of what he 
meant when he wrote to the men of his time, 
"Quit you like men!" 

I was reading the other day the story of a 
Yorkshire man who, sick of his life, went out 
one moonlight night and rigged up his gun in 
the woods, and put the muzzle of it against his 
head, and was about to push the trigger with 
his toe, when something stirred in his heart. 
He looked up and saw the moonlight filtering 
down through the leaves, and he kicked his gun 
into the thicket, and drawled: "Naw, I'll not 
do it. There's zummat in me aside the dog. 
I'll live game and zee it through"; And he 
went back to live his life, game to see it through. 

I think that is what Paul meant — that how- 
ever many the difficulties that assail me as I 
dream my dreams and try to realize them in 
life, I am no man if I will not live game and 
see it through. Many men have had their 
greatest triumphs after they have gone down 
into the depths, like the old Yorkshire man. 

How many men there are who have risen 
out of what seemed a complete knockout in the 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 393 



battle of life, who owe the courage and game 
spirit with which they met the future and over- 
came to a hand they stretched out in friend- 
ship and love. In my long experience as a 
minister and pastor of large aggregations of 
men and women, whenever I have seen a virile, 
strong man who has failed and then risen again 
and struggled on to higher victories than ever, 
I have learned to look for some good woman, 
who, it may be out of sight of the public, has 
thrown herself into the breach, and by her love 
given the nerve and inspiration and courage for 
this new battle that changed a beaten man into 
a conqueror. Everard Jack Appleton has 
given us a wonderful poem, perhaps in answer 
to Kipling's remarkable creation The Vam- 
pire. Appleton writes of The Woman Who 
Understands. How graphically he portrays 
her: 

"Somewhere she waits to make you win, 
Your soul in her firm white hands — 
Somewhere the gods have made for you, 
The Woman Who Understands ! 

"As the tide went out she found him 
Lashed to a spar of despair, 
The wreck of his ship around him, 
The wreck of his dreams in the air; 
Found him, and loved him, and gathered 



394 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



The soul of him close to her heart — 
Leading him back to his standards lost, 
Guarding his soul, whatever the cost — 

That soul of which she was part, 

Helping and loving him ever. Therein 

She gave him the strength to fight, and to win. 

"This is the story of ages, 

This is the woman's way; 
Wiser than seers or sages, 

Lifting us day by day; 

Facing all things with a courage 
Nothing can daunt or dim, 

Treading life's path wherever it leads — 

Lined with flowers or choked with weeds, 
But ever with him — with him ! 

Guardian — comrade — golden spur — 

The men who win are helped by her. 

"Somewhere she waits, strong in belief, 
Your soul in her firm white hands; 
Thank well the gods when she comes to you — 
The Woman Who Understands. " 

There can be no final defeat to a man who 
lives gamely in a spirit of determination to 
make the best of life, to meet every rebuff with 
a smile, never to live in the past except to get 
courage out of it, and never facing the future 
except as an opportunity for achievement. If 
childhood has gone, then make the most of 
youth. If youth has passed, seize the high- 
noon of your life and make it splendid. If 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 



395 



you face the threshhold of old age, you have 
still an epoch that may be filled with interest 
and adventure and holy endeavor which will 
make the evening of your life sweet and beau- 
tiful and strong. See Socrates, when his hair 
was white with the snow of age, learning to play 
on instruments of music in order that he might 
add to the world a little charm. See Cato at 
eighty years of age taking up Greek literature: 
and Plutarch, after more than four-score years 
of experience, seriously studying Latin litera- 
ture with all the enthusiasm of an am- 
bitious boy in High School. See Chaucer, 
writing the Canterbury Tales in "his old age. 
See Gladstone, a charming dinner companion 
and a most ambitious statesman at eighty-five. 
See Julia Ward Howe, sought after in the 
very highest and brightest literary and social 
circles long after she was eighty. Listen to 
Paul's bugle notes, catch his gameness of spirit 
— "Quit you like men," and you need never 
grow old. 

IV. And finally, Paul regards a spirit of 
love as essential to great strength. He says: 
"Let all that ye do be done in love." 

Robert Browning, in one of his short poems, 



396 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



with that wonderful spiritual insight which was 
his supreme gift, writes of the sense of in- 
completeness in life — of something wanting to 
give life zest and quicken its energies into 
rapturous exercise and achievement. He is 
not writing of troubled lives, or of sinful lives, 
but of lives that are fine and good and moral, 
but tasteless; lives that seem to fall short of 
that which would make them splendid and vic- 
torious and joyful. He says: 

"Wanting is — what? 
Summer redundant, 
Blueness abundant, 
—Where is the blot? 
Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, 
Framework, which waits for a picture to frame." 

You catch the idea. It is a summer day full of 
splendor. The whole heaven is blue. The 
world is full of light, and the senses are stirred 
by the beauty of earth and sea and sky. But 
there is a blot upon it all. There is no life in 
it. There is a blank as tho it were a frame 
upon the wall empty of its picture. Then there 
comes a change. Like a breeze of cool air from 
off the sea there passes a breath of spiritual 
passion upon the heart. Love awakes within, 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 397 

the world becomes full of deepest interest, and 
life gains the keenest zest. 

"Breathe but one breath 
And all that was death 
Grows life, grows love, 
Grows love!" 

How often we have seen that in life. Here 
is a man who has found life stale and dull and 
is passing on through its course, listless and 
apathetic, wondering whether life is worth liv- 
ing; then the love passion awakes in his heart. 
It may be a time of war, when his country 
appeals to him, and a new sense of patriotism is 
aroused, love of country possesses him, and he 
leaps to the front a new man, eager, expectant, 
daring, transformed by the new love of country 
that has taken possession of him. Or it may 
be that God gives him a glimpse of some op- 
press t people who need to have burdens lifted 
from their shoulders, some great reform that 
appeals to his inner soul, quickens his love for 
mankind, stirs him out of himself, makes him 
forget himself; then this new enthusiasm for 
humanity, born of this new love, makes a new 
strong man of him. Or it may be a great 
human affection that comes to him. Sud- 



398 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



denly a divine love for another human being 
possesses him. He forgets himself. His love 
puts all his selfishness in the background. The 
love he holds for his beloved is so much greater 
than his love for himself or his own life that 
every power within him is quickened into 
action. Life takes on fresh charm, and all the 
world seems new. 

The noblest love music of the past century is 
to be found in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 
Sonnets from the Portugese. You know her 
story, no doubt. She had long been an invalid, 
confined to her couch, and expecting to live 
only a few years, gradually fading away until 
death should come as a relief. That was Eliza- 
beth Barrett's outlook on life. Suddenly, as 
tho he had dropt out of the sky, the mar- 
velously virile personality of Robert Brown- 
ing, robust, vital, overflowing with strength 
and laughter, came into her life, and to her 
overwhelming amazement the whole passion of 
his great heart went out to her. Her sense of 
the wonder and mystery and grace of that love, 
her conception of the sacrifice it seemed to in- 
volve, are poured into her sonnets, almost too 
sacred for the public eye. She records in the 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 399 

first sonnet the moment when her love was 
evoked: 

" 'Guess now who holds theef — 'Death', I said. But there, 
The silver answer rang — 'Not Death, but Love'." 

What a splendid illustration that is of the 
way the divine love through Jesus Christ comes 
into the hearts of men. A man has been going 
his own way, living largely a material life, his 
horizon close about him in his business and 
political and social affairs, scarcely lifted above 
the dust and turmoil of each passing day ; then 
suddenly, through some agency divine, the 
great spiritual truths break in upon his heart. 
He catches a new vision of himself; he is not 
merely a cog in the machinery of this world, 
he is a child of God, a brother of Jesus Christ. 
Death is not the end of all ; he is to live forever. 
The horizon lifts and stretches away without 
limit. And these men and women about him — 
they, too, are immortal. They are his brothers 
and his sisters. They, too, are the children of 
his heavenly Father. A divine tenderness and 
kindness spring up in his heart toward them, 
and the atmosphere of love transforms him, 
consumes his selfishness, takes the edge off his 



400 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



avarice, palsies the hand of greed, and fills his 
soul, his whole being, with a gracious, loving 
desire to bless his fellow men. 

The strong life lived in this spirit can not 
fail of happiness. For happiness is never 
found when you pursue it as the goal. Happi- 
ness is a reward for toil done in a noble and 
loving spirit. David Grayson in his Adven- 
tures in Contentment, says, 

"Happiness must be tricked: She loves to see men at 
work. She loves sweat, weariness, self-sacrifice. She will 
be found not in palaces, but lurking in cornfields and 
factories, or hovering over littered desks: she crowns the 
unconscious head of the busy child. If you look up sudden- 
ly from hard work you will see her, but if you look too long 
she fades sorrowfully away. . . . Human happiness is the 
true odor of growth, the sweet exhalation of work, and the 
seed of human immortality is born secretly within the 
coarse and mortal husk. So many of us crave the odor 
without cultivating the early growth from which it pro- 
ceeds: so many, wasting mortality, expect immortality V 

Do you remember the old abbot of the middle 
ages who said, "He that is a true monk con- 
siders nothing as belonging to himself except 
his harp"? Ah, that is the spirit in which we 
ought to live! Go forth singing as we go. 
Nothing can hold us down or fence us in if 
we face life in that spirit. All that is glorious 



THE SOURCES OF STRENGTH 



401 



in adventure: all that is splendid in achieve- 
ment: all that is noble in character, belong to 
him who goes forth with his face toward the 
sky, singing as he goes ! 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS 
OF LIFE 



"But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and 
the greatest of these is love." — 1 Cor. 13 : 13. 

PRESIDENT ELIOT, so long the illus- 
trious leader of Harvard, has coined a 
striking phrase which bids fair for a long 
career. In describing certain sublime comforts 
to humanity, he speaks of them as "the durable 
satisfactions of life." Paul has something of 
the same idea in mind when instead of 
"durable," he uses the word "abide" in our 
text, and names faith, hope and love as at once 
the three abiding forces as well as the satis- 
factions of the noblest life possible for men 
and women to live. The study of Paul's "im- 
mortal three," gives us a great theme. 

I. First, we have the thought of love. Paul 
gives the primacy in the Christian program of 
the noble life to love, doubtless because love 
is the spirit, the atmosphere, in which such a 

402 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 403 



life must be lived. God has made us so like 
himself that we can never do our best work 
unless we live in the spirit of God, which is 
love. The human heart is the most sensitive as 
well as the most exquisite musical instrument 
ever created ; and love alone can keep it in such 
perfect tune as to make it possible for it to 
render the full chorus of life. Men and women 
can do their best only when tuned to full har- 
mony. Just as a skilful musician comes to a 
wheezy organ or nerve-racking piano and, by 
his wise touch, brings it into harmony so 
that it can render with full power the 
most splendid creation of the masters, so love 
alone can attune the mind and heart of man so 
as to make possible his greatest service to the 
world. German autocracy set its millions of 
long-trained warriors fighting under the in- 
spiration of hymns of hate, but it did not win ; 
and such a spirit never will. Love, not hate, is 
the key to the highest efficiency of mankind. 

Illustrations of the power of love to quicken 
human lives into action abound in all the com- 
mon, every-day life we know so well. Two 
people come to love each other, and a miracle 
happens: suddenly they see heaven in each 



404 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



other's eyes. The very common, ordinary 
things of life are transfigured to them. The 
one conscious of being beloved in that inspiring 
atmosphere finds all his or her powers quick- 
ened into music, brought through peace and 
harmony to better service than ever before. 
Love is the greatest miracle worker in the 
world. Every ordinary day love sees dull faces 
become radiant and heavy hearts grow 
buoyant. Love sees the ugliness of a mental 
and spiritual winter, which has held a life 
locked in uselessness, melt away under his 
touch into singing beauty and blessing, just as 
the warmth of spring breaks the grip of the ice 
on a frozen river and sends its happy waters 
shouting to the sea. When the melting sun 
of springtime sends down its call into field and 
garden and forest, every life germ hears the 
call and tries to respond. The buried bulb 
bursts its mummy-like shell. The sap springs 
from the roots to the finger-tips of the trees 
with leaves and blossoms. The vine that 
seemed only yesterday a rope of death responds 
with its green veil of beauty and its blooming 
wreath of honor. All nature through harmony 
is brought into response in a triumphant Hal- 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 405 

lelujah Chorus to the Creator. So when love 
comes to the hearts of men and women, the 
heart melts, the mind awakes, the eye brightens, 
the cheek catches a glow from heaven, hope 
beckons to high endeavor, and the world has to 
reckon with a new, transformed, glorified per- 
sonality. 

It is like that when the great Divine Lover 
comes to the soul of a redeemed man or woman. 

"Thou shalt know Him, when He comes, 
Not by any din of drums, 
Nor the vantage of His airs; 
Neither by His crown, 
Nor His gown, 
Nor anything He wears; 
He shall only well-known be 
By the holy harmony 
That His coming makes in thee." 

Xothing is too hard for love. I lectured one 
night, years ago, more than a dozen miles out 
of Boston. The fine old gentleman who pre- 
sided told me that many years before he 
had presided in that same hall at a lecture by 
Wendell Phillips, then at the climax of his 
great fame as an orator. On that occasion, he 
said, the night was very rainy and it was a 
most tedious and wearying drive to a man 



406 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



already growing old. So my friend said that 
he tried to persuade Mr. Phillips to remain 
over night. Mr. Phillips declined. The host 
insisted: "The night is dark, the storm is 
driving furiously, it will be midnight or after 
before you can reach home." But Wendell 
Phillips answered cheerily, "Yes, that is all 
true, it is a long, hard ride, but then" — and 
he threw back his shoulders, and into his eyes 
came a love-light that glorified his noble face, 
"Mary Phillips is at the end of the road." 
That great love made it all easy. Love makes 
all the burdens light. 

Love is also far-sighted, is quick to perceive 
the presence of the beloved. When the friends 
of Jesus had fished all night in vain, and at the 
break of day their Master came walking beside 
the sea, it was John, preeminently the man of 
love in that little group, who first discovered 
that it was Jesus. Love has keen eyes to dis j 
cern the lover. 

When Elisha, the gracious prophet of divine 
love, was at Dothan, he was surrounded at 
night by enemies whose general sent a large 
army to capture the one man. And when his 
young secretary went out in the morning and 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 407 



saw the host of enemies, he came back in despair 
with his bad news. But Elisha smiled and said 
confidently: "Fear not; for they that are with 
us are more than they that are with them." And 
when, in response to the prayer of Elisha, the 
young man was given spiritual perception, he 
beheld the whole mountain full of the chariots 
and horsemen of heaven. God still gives 
spiritual perception to those who love him. 
Multitudes of God's trusting souls still find 
that, 

"Life's rugged mountain side 
Is white with many an angel tent." 

Love is the supreme grace because it is the 
essence of God — if we may so speak of the 
divine personality. The declaration of John 
that "God is love," is the most stupendous 
statement of the New Testament. Because 
God is love, he is able to love us even when we 
are unlovable, and that love of God for unlov- 
able men and women is working miracles all 
around the earth, in every land and among all 
people. It has answered, with marvelous trans- 
formations, the age-old question, "Can the 
Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his 
spots?" The love of God through Jesus Christ 



408 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



is changing liars into truth-tellers, backbiters 
and slanderers into helpful saints, thieves into 
honest men, and fretful naggers into a peace- 
ful blessing to all who know them. You can 
not tell me anything so glorious about the 
transforming miracles of divine grace and love 
that I will not believe it, for I can match it in 
my own experience and observation of the love 
of God in the hearts and lives of men and 
women I have known. 

Thank God, there are no hopeless cases to 
his love. John, whose name is so often on our 
lips, was a firebrand of hate and ugliness of 
spirit. When he first became acquainted with 
Jesus, he asked of him in a moment of personal 
pique the power to call down fire from heaven 
to burn up a town with all the men and women 
and little children in it. But that would-be 
murderer, through association with Jesus, came 
through God's love to be the saint of all that 
group, and to this day is known to the ends of 
the earth as the apostle of love. 

My friends, if you forget everything else I 
may say to-day, never, I beg of you, forget 
this: "There are no hopeless cases to the eves 
of God's love." 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 409 

I have just been reading a beautiful book, 
the latest book by Harold Bell Wright, en- 
titled The Re-creation of Brian Kent. In this 
he tells the story of "Aunty Sue," a lovely old 
maiden school teacher, a woman whose heart 
has come, through long fellowship with God, 
to be as sweet as the heart of Jesus. In Aunty 
Sue's eyes there were no hopeless cases: a poor 
thieving wretch of a man, dead drunk and ripe 
for delirium-tremens, and a dwarfed mon- 
strosity of a mountain girl, who, through lack 
of discipline, and misuse, and cruelty, and 
ignorance, was as ugly in her spirit as was her 
poor, gnarled, twisted body, were cases full of 
hope and infinite opportunity to Aunty Sue, 
and under her hand they blossomed into beauty 
and usefulness. I covet for you every one 
what I pray God daily for myself, that we may 
have so much of the divine love in our hearts, 
and that his love may so come to be the atmos- 
phere and spirit of our lives, that we, too, shall 
never give up in our effort to redeem and re- 
claim a crippled or dwarfed or wandering man 
or woman whom God's dear love sent Jesus to 
die to save. 

II. Then we have the thought of hope. 



410 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Hope is the one tonic that can keep the soul of 
a man or woman nerved up to the fight against 
all odds on the way to the holiest victories. In 
many instances we find men and women whose 
efficiency and useful service are due more to 
their energy than to their ability. Hope is the 
supreme source of energy. It is the spiritual 
"pep," to borrow a college boy's phrase, that 
puts all our powers into action and keeps life's 
machinery running at white heat, despite all 
handicaps. Hope and love are very dependent 
on each other. They always hunt best in pairs. 
When the women brought the news of the 
empty grave in Joseph's garden, on that first 
Easter morning, Peter and John spontan- 
eously ran a race for the tomb. John outran 
Peter, for he loved Jesus most, but Peter 
passed him at the mouth of the sepulchre and 
went boldly in and searched out every detail, 
while John timidly hesitated at the threshold. 
John was love, Peter was hope. You are never 
whipt until you cease to hope. Hope is the 
star that is ever beckoning us onward and up- 
ward to new and higher conquests. 

Do you remember that unique and often mis- 
understood promise, in the second chapter of 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 411 



this remarkable book of Revelation? It is a 
promise made to those who overcome in the 
Christian life and remain stedfast in loyalty 
to the right. The promise is: "I will give him 
the morning star." I imagine some of you may 
have read that promise and said in your hearts, 
if not with your lips, "What a strange gift! 
What value would the morning star be to me? 
Nothing very practical about a gift like that!" 
Ah! you are missing one of the most precious 
gifts of God. The morning star is the star 
of hope. It foretells the death of the night and 
the coming of the new day. It tells of the 
passing of the darkness and of the dawn that 
is at hand. It reminds you that "weeping may 
endure for a night, but jov cometh in the morn- 
ing." 

All the great souls who have fought the great 
sins of the ages, and brought about the reforms 
that from time to time have set the world for- 
ward in the march of progress, have been, above 
all else "Prisoners of Hope." Such men as 
Garrison, Wilberforce, Love joy, Wendell 
Phillips, and their compeers fought against 
desperate odds in their crusade for the over- 
throw of slavery and the spread of human 



412 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



liberty. Hope was the morning star that led 
them through the darkness into the light of 
freedom. 

It was so in the great struggle for a sober 
nation: such heroic spirits as Neal Dow, John 
B. Gough, Frances Willard, and hundreds of 
others who poured out their souls in sacrifice 
on that sacred altar, were inspired by an im- 
mortal hope that beckoned them ever onward, 
through the darkness, toward the glorious sun- 
rise which we who have come later have rejoiced 
to see. God grant that we, too, may be true to 
our morning star ! 

"Had Moses failed to go, had God 

Granted his prayer, there would have been 
For him no leadership to win, 
No pillared fire, no magic rod, 
No wonders in the land of Zin. 

"No smiting of the sea, no tears, 
Ecstatic shed on Sinai steep, 
No Nebo, with a God to keep 
His burial; only forty years 

Of desert, watching with his sheep." 

So many men herd sheep who might herd 
with angels, because they fail to follow the 
morning star of hope. 

If I speak to any discouraged soul, let me 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 413 



urge you to follow your star of hope to the end. 
Charles Kingsley once said, "Be patient with 
God." Some of you are working on the plastic 
mind and heart of childhood, others are pray- 
ing and toiling to fashion into holier form 
what seems to be the hardening marble of a 
dearly beloved human heart and soul, which, to 
your short-sighted vision, appears ever to be im- 
pervious to the influence divine. Oh, my friend, 
your purpose is so holy, the prize you struggle 
for so great, the work you are trying to do 
so noble and sublime, that it behooves you to 
be patient. You must not let hope perish. Great 
things require long preparation and persistence 
of toil. God can grow a mushroom in a night, 
in three weeks he will produce a radish, but 
for a cottonwood tree he takes twenty years 
and doubles that when he grows a maple. 
When he would grow an oak tree, he puts five 
hundred years on it, and does not deem it waste 
to outlay five thousand years to produce a giant 
redwood. Eut when that strong oak and that 
vast redwood tower have crumbled back to 
their native dust, the child, the immortal spirit, 
for whom you think and plan and toil and pray, 
will be still in the morning of the eternal youth 



414 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of the glorious career God sees before it. So 
let all of us who strive to bless humanity pray 
that our star of hope may not grow dim or dis- 
appear. 

III. Then there is this last thought of faith. 
The vertebra of a noble life — its stamina and 
backbone — is faith. Faith in God is the re- 
liable backbone of every great life. This is 
tremendously important just now in America. 
Multitudes of our young men are coming home 
from the great war, having for the first time 
seriously looked into the face of the gigantic 
elemental realities. John Oxenham writes of 
it in his searching little poem — an interrog- 
atory poem about a boy just back from the 
great upheaval of war : 

"What did you see out there, my lad, 
That has set that look in your eyes? 
You went out a boy, you have come back a man, 
With strange new depths underneath your tan; 
What was it you saw out there, my lad. 
That set such deeps in your eyes?" 

And then comes the answer: 

"Strange things, — and sad, — and wonderful, — 
Things that I scarce can tell, — 
I have been in the sweep of the Reaper's scythe 
With God —and Christ —and hell." 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 415 

This is the time to test the bedrock of faith 
and see what it is that produces great men. 
Many are floundering. If we listen to H. G. 
Wells and others like him, dangerous because 
of the beauty of their literary style and bril- 
liant sophistry, we are tempted to believe that 
the God of the Bible is outworn and outgrown 
— indeed, has deteriorated into a sort of broken 
down Samson in his own universe — a poor 
helpless giant, bound with the green withes of 
law and fate and force. But I agree with my 
beloved and eloquent friend, Frederick Shan- 
non, who remarks in a recent discourse of great 
spiritual insight that the God of the Bible has 
outlived countless novelists, scientists, theo- 
logians, and preachers. 

Puny and feeble indeed seem all the men 
produced by materialism compared with the 
men of faith in a personal God, There are 
three famous threes who have made an inef- 
faceable mark in literature. There are Alex- 
ander Dumas' famous musketeers — daring fel- 
lows, reckless of human life, and yet with such 
a breezy dash about them, and with certain 
qualities which so appeal to the elemental man- 
hood in us, that their fame has kept alive 



41$ 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



through the years: and one may easily believe 
that the story of Athos and Porthos and 
Aramis will still for centuries quicken the blood 
of gallant boys in search of adventures. 

Then there are Kipling's three famous sol- 
diers — stolid fellows they are; shocking in their 
profanity, but brave and fearless and manly in 
many ways. And they too somehow make 
such an appeal to the deep fundamental things 
in our human nature as to promise for Mul- 
vaney and Ortheris and Learoyd a long career. 
But how poor and vulgar these two threes 
with all their courage and daring appear beside 
Daniel's dauntless three who faced the great 
King Nebuchadnezzar and calmly went into 
the fiery , furnace rather than renounce their 
faith in the one true God. Long after the 
other two threes are forgotten, the homely 
named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego 
will live in immortal glory. Men will tell to 
the end of time, and recount through all the 
ages of eternity, how the form of the Fourth 
walked with them through the flames that were 
helpless to harm them. 

When you begin to recall faith's heroes, you 
climb out of the valley with its fog and noisome 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 417 

vapors into the sunshine and the pure air on 
the high hills of God. How splendidly Paul 
calls the roll of the nobility of faith in the 
eleventh chapter of Hebrews! He tells us of 
Abel and Enoch and Abraham and Isaac and 
Jacob and Sarah and Joseph and Moses, of 
the downfall of Jericho, and the transforma- 
tion of Rahab, and then bursts forth into one 
of the most sublime paragraphs in all litera- 
ture: "And what shall I more say? for the 
time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, 
Samson, Jephtha; of David and Samuel and 
the prophets: who through faith subdued king- 
doms, wrought righteousness, obtained prom- 
ises, stopt the mouths of lions, quenched 
the power of fire, escaped the edge of the 
sword, from weakness were made strong, 
waxed mighty in war, turned to flight armies 
of aliens. Women received their dead by 
resurrection: and others were tortured, not 
accepting their deliverance; that they might 
obtain a better resurrection; and others had 
trial of mockings and scourgings, yea, more- 
over of bonds and imprisonment: they were 
stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were 
tempted, they were slain with the sword ; they 



418 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



went about in sheep -skins, in goat-skins ; being 
destitute, afflicted, ill treated (of whom the 
world was not worthy) ." 

Only the faith of the Bible in a personal God 
has produced a list of heroes like that. 

Paul himself is as great an illustration of 
the noble manhood faith can produce as any 
of those he placed on his roll of heroes. There 
is nothing more splendid in any language than 
that wonderful paragraph which Paul wrote 
to Timothy as the .end of life drew near: "For 
I am already being offered, and the time of 
my departure is come. I have fought the good 
fight, I have finished the course, I have kept 
the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me 
the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the 
righteous judge, shall give to me at that day; 
and not to me only, but also to all them that 
have loved his appearing." 

Rightly to appreciate those words, you need 
to stand in the place where they were written. 
I never shall forget one hot summer morning 
in Rome when with a party of friends I went 
down into that old Mamertine prison which 
was in Paul's time the dungeon underneath the 
palace of Nero, there Paul, as a prisoner 



THE DURABLE SATISFACTIONS OF LIFE 419 

awaiting execution, wrote those wonderful 
words. It was a bright day above, and we had 
gone down out of the sunshine into the dark- 
ness, lighted only by a torch and the tapers in 
our hands. While we stood in that damp, cold 
place, I shivered a little and thought how 
Paul in this same letter to Timothy asked 
that his cloak be sent to him: Paul needed it. 
In summer we needed wraps, and he was there 
in winter. Then one of our number read this 
wonderful paragraph of Paul's dying courage 
and faith, and the tears ran down our cheeks as 
we listened and remembered the old hero who at 
the last of life, waiting for the executioner's 
block, could bear such glorious testimony to his 
undying faith in God. 

The men of the durable forces and the abid- 
ing satisfactions of life must conquer and con- 
trol the new world in this marvelous epoch on 
which we are entering. The old order, with 
Cain's brutal question on its lips, "Am I my 
brother's keeper?" is forever passing away. 
The new epoch must have a new slogan, a new 
leadership of men of faith, hope, and love, 
whose motto shall be: "Wrong everywhere 
must die and right everywhere must reign." 



THE VALUE OF CHARM IN A 
CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY 



"Whatsoever things are lovely." — Phil. 4 : 8. 

GOD loves beautiful things. There can be 
no doubt of it: the touch of beauty and 
grace is on all his universe. Take the things 
most common — the grass on the hillsides and 
plains and prairies, just common grass, is the 
most beautiful garment with which God has 
clothed the naked world in loveliness. The 
trees, from the giant redwood, the lofty cedar 
and pine and fir, the stalwart oak and the 
graceful elm, to the bewitching white birch, or 
the flowering laurel and the drooping willow, 
are all, each in its own way, things of beauty. 
Even the rocks are sculptured by the far-reach- 
ing chisels of sun and frost and rain into sub- 
limity and beauty. The soils are ever attracting 
our interest by their rainbow coloring — now 
black, then ashen, then red as the sunset, or 
nearly golden as the sunrise. Every morning 

420 



THE VALUE OF CHARM 



421 



and every evening is ushered in and ushered 
out again with a hallelujah chorus of glorious 
beauty. 

Each season has a loveliness all its own, 
Springtime flushes the whole world with life — 
flowers spring up even before the trees are 
awake. In swampy places the first days of 
warmth set the sunshine to working miracles. 
In the forests the wild plum and the redbud 
and the dogwood and the azaleas and the wild 
currant vie with the bursting buds on the trees 
for the prize of being first at the beauty show 
of God. 

The beautiful in the trees must compete with 
the beauty on the ground in meadow and pas- 
ture and valley. Up through the green carpet 
of the grass spring buttercups and daisies and 
lilies and scores of wild blooms that make a 
scene of glory in everybody's garden tended by 
no one but God, the great Gardener. Wild 
roses bloom along the edge of woods and the 
brooks and along the road, bordering it with 
loveliness beyond words to describe. Vines 
climb over rocks and old snags, covering them 
with the draperies of heaven. 

The hills also and the great mountains, with 



422 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



their forest-covered slopes, their rugged preci- 
pices, their long ice rivers issuing from their 
snow-clad summits, from beneath which rivers 
leap full born to go forth on their mission of 
beauty and service for humanity, are all clothed 
in sublimity and loveliness. God's own home 
in the clouds is a canopy of beauty, ever chang- 
ing from glory unto glory. 

The beauty thirst of God is beyond limita- 
tion. He has made all animal life beautiful: 
tigers, lions, leopards, eagles, condors, alli- 
gators—even these things that prey upon 
others for their very life — God has clothed with 
beauty. The birds are the lovely denizens of 
wood and vale and sky that are always appeal- 
ing to our sense of the beautiful. 

God loves beauty not only in form and color, 
but in sounds and harmonies. The very storms 
sing anthems ; the meadow lark's music in the 
morning sunshine or the nightingale's serenade 
at night or the robin's matin is as sure testi- 
mony of God's love of beauty as the feast of 
apple bloom or a thicket of wild roses. All 
these are but samples picked up at random here 
and there to show that God loves beauty. 

God made man to be beautiful, and Paul 



TEE VALUE OF CHARM 



423 



assures us that Christian manhood or woman- 
hood should be the most beautiful and attrac- 
tive personality in all the bright universe of 
God ; that in order to make our Christian lives 
the most useful to God and to our fellow men, 
we should gather together into our own natures 
the most beautiful things to be found anywhere 
and set them to growing in our minds and 
hearts and manners, until the charm of our per- 
sonality will draw the world from sin to our 
Christ. Paul's idea is that just as some great 
metropolitan nurseryman or florist brings 
beautiful shrubs and plants and blooms from 
the ends of the earth to his garden — the jas- 
mine from the East Indies, the dahlia from the 
plateaus of Mexico, the tuberose from Java, the 
fuchsia from Chili, the annuals from Cali- 
fornia, the carnations and pinks from Italy, 
the heliotrope from Peru, and orchids from the 
great roof -gar dens among the tree- tops of the 
dense forests along the Amazon and Roose- 
velt's River of Doubt in Brazil, so the Christian 
man or woman who would be at his or her best 
must gather spiritual beauty from the whole 
realm of human experience and character and 
set every root of loveliness and beauty to grow 



424 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



in the fertile soil of their own souls, until the 
whole personality is clothed with all possible 
spiritual charm. 

To do this in the most efficient manner we 
must get it settled in our hearts that charm is 
important ; that taken all in all, the man or the 
woman who is not only good and true, but good 
and true in a charming, attractive manner, will 
be the most pleasing to God and will be able to 
be a greater blessing to others. Let us study 
to find some of these sources of charm that will 
make our lives more influential for good. 

I. I would put cheerfulness first. Do you 
remember that Scripture which says, "The joy 
of the Lord is your strength?" There is a 
marvelous power in joy that bubbles over into 
eyes and voices and faces and muscles and sets 
a sincere wholesome man or woman all aquiver 
with the gladness of living. 

Epictetus was a poor slave, but he made the 
world his debtor for centuries. Hear the dear 
old fellow saying: "I must die, but must I then 
die sorrowing? I must be put in chains. Must 
I then also lament? I must go into exile. Can 
I be prevented from going with cheerfulness 
and contentment? 'But I will put you in 



THE VALUE OF CHARM 



425 



prison/ Man, what are you saying? You can 
put my body in prison, but my mind not even 
Zeus himself can overpower." 

How that was proved in the case of John 
Bunyan ! They put his body in prison but his 
mind and heart consorted with angels and 
roved in the pastures of the skies, and that won- 
derful benediction to the world, Pilgrim's 
Progress, was the result. How much humanity 
owes to the fact that John Bunyan had ac- 
quired the charming grace of cheerfulness ! 

Even ill health may be robbed of its ugliness 
if we maintain a cheerful spirit. Sidney Smith, 
ever ready to look on the bright side of things, 
once, when borne down by suffering, wrote to 
a friend that he had gout and asthma and seven 
other maladies, but was "otherwise very well." 
That spirit will bless every one who comes 
within its reach. 

One writer tells how a while ago he noticed 
a tree planted at the sunny end of a house, and 
there the blossoms were large and beautiful, 
a feast to the eyes. But some of the branches 
were trained around the corner of the house, 
where they got much less of the sun, and the 
difference was marked. The blossoms in the 



426 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



shadow were starved and sad, and there was 
little promise of fruit. There was the same 
root and stem, but the branches in the sunshine 
were glorious in beauty and blessing, while 
those in the shadow were pale and dwarfed. 

It is like that in our influence for blessing 
every day of our lives! I remember a line of 
James Russell Lowell's which goes : 

"It is good 
To lengthen to the last a sunny mood." 

Yes, and it is good to hold ourselves to that 
mood by keeping in the sunshine of faith in the 
good purpose of God. "God is love" — love all 
the way through; it is his essence, his very life; 
and if we breathe that atmosphere and live in 
that sunshine, we may keep that mood. 

II. If we live in the sunshine the next 
quality will come easy. Our greatest useful- 
ness must come from having about our per- 
sonality the charm of kindness. 

I suppose it is true that nothing in this 
world can be such a joy-killer as unkindness. 
At the base it is surely one of the cardinal sins. 
In the common life of every day in home and 
business, unkindness probably discourages more 



THE VALUE OF CHARM 



427 



good resolutions, hardens more hearts against 
the appeal to goodness, and settles sullen gloom 
and hate as a pall of death on more natures than 
anything else. Oh, if men and women who 
really desire to be good and do good in the 
world could only appreciate what a damnable 
thing unkindness is in its results ! 

When I was a boy in Oregon, a Mr. Rarey, 
a great horse-trainer, came through the Wil- 
lamette Valley where I lived, giving wonderful 
exhibitions of his power to tame and control 
wild horses. This great horse-trainer said 
something I have never forgotton. He said 
that he had known a single angry word to raise 
the pulse of a horse ten beats in a minute. If 
an angry, unkind word could do that to a horse, 
think what a blow it must be to a nervous, sen- 
sitive child! Children are almost entirely at 
the mercy of the people around them. God 
pity the children who have to live in an atmos- 
phere that is unkind and unloving. 

Watkinson, the great English preacher, has 
a great sermon on the text: "This is the law of 
the house; upon the top of the mountain the 
whole limit thereof round about shall be most 
holy." And in illustrating it he declares that 



428 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the time is coming when we must seek the more 
delicate conscience, the conscience that bears 
witness to the Holy Spirit, and bring it to be 
judge and to determine all doubtful questions 
of our relations to one another. All evil things, 
however cunningly disguised, are to be cast out, 
and all common things are to be transfigured. 
And he calls attention to the fact that some of 
our greatest painters do not bring into their 
work any of the splendid objects of nature — 
breadths of golden corn, trees in bloom, be- 
spangled meadows, the pomp of forests, the 
mountain's purple patch, rainbows, and the 
wings of butterflies — they simply paint a sand 
bank, a cutting, a plowed field with a dim 
peasant or two, and yet their picture is steeped 
in color and rich in poetry ; the perfume of the 
blossom exhales from the dust, the rainbow is 
revealed in the clod, and more than the splen- 
dor of kings is suggested in the pathos of the 
peasant. So must we make common things 
grand with the charm of righteousness ; so must 
we give to all commonplace life the beauty of 
holiness. God help you and help me, each in 
our own place and opportunity, to hasten that 
glorious day of God when men will do bitter 



THE VALUE OF CHARM 



429 



penance for having given their brother an 
angry look or an unkind word ; when men and 
women will rather wear a leper's rags than 
wear fine clothing stained with the working- 
man's blood or the tears of the sweat shop. 
When all our common life shall be filled with 
the beauty and the charm of the spirit of Jesus 
Christ. 

Charm is so important that our best and 
most heroic deeds may fail of blessing and re- 
ward through lack of it. Paul advised some 
people to whom he was writing not to do good 
in such a manner that their good would be evil 
spoken of — which is but another way of saying 
that good must be done in a charming manner 
to get the best result. And in that oft-quoted 
paragraph on love in the thirteenth chapter of 
First Corinthians, Paul assures us that our 
greatest sacrifices, even martydom itself, may 
fail of reward unless clothed with the charm 
of love. 

In the great sayings of the twelfth chapter 
of Romans one of the greatest epigrams of 
Paul is, "He that doeth mercy with cheerful- 
ness." Even so glorious and God-like a deed 
as showing mercy may lose its power to bless 



430 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



unless it is done in a charming manner. How 
often a gruff, morose manner or voice may rob 
a good deed of its gracious influence! The 
world would be a much happier place in which 
to live if all good men and good women would 
cultivate a gentle, musical voice and a gracious, 
kindly manner. 

No one should be discouraged by this high 
ideal. It is within the reach of every one. God 
can help us to achieve it. One of the most 
beautiful scenes in all the wonderlands of the 
American Northwest is Crater Lake in 
Southern Oregon. Once it was a tremendous 
volcano belching forth fire and flame and 
streams of devastating lava which filled all that 
part of the world with terror. To-day those 
long slopes of lava are changed into fruitful 
soil, and great forests are rooted in what was 
a desolate waste. That once flaming cavern 
that belched forth fire and poisonous gases, like 
the mouth of hell, is filled with sweet, pure 
water, and is one of the beauty spots of God's 
beautiful world. God did it. He can do that 
with men and women. 

Do you remember the poor demon-possest 
man of Gadara whom Jesus healed, who ceased 



THE VALUE OF CHARM 



•431 



to be a terror and went home at Christ's word 
and told all the wondering people who had 
known him the story of his redemption? Christ 
is still working miracles like that wherever men 
kneel to pray and open their hearts -to the com- 
ing of the Son of Man. It is the old, old 
miracle which Paul speaks of when he says, 
"Where sin abounds, grace shall much more 
abound." Christ is the great charm-maker of 
the world. Let us welcome him to the mastery 
of our hearts and lives ! 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



"They shall bring forth fruit in old age."— Ps. 92 : 14. 

LITERATURE is full of songs and happy 
J sayings about the beauty of childhood and 
youth. Young manhood and unfolding 
womanhood have many poets and appreciative 
writers to voice glory of their beauty and 
strength. High noon in both men and women 
has been attractive enough to awaken the lyre 
of the singer and the oratory of the speaker. 
But old age has not many songs, save those 
that are set in a minor key; most of them are 
sad, tho some of them are full of music. There 
is nothing in all literature with statelier tread 
or a finer swing than that solemn and dignified 
sonnet of the wise man who calls on us to re- 
member the certain passing of youth and 
strength; the certain failure of all middle-aged 
glory and vigor. He foretells and depicts, 
with graphic word-painting, the decay of the 
earthly house of man's physical pride and 
glory: 

432 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



433 



"Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth: 
Before the evil days come, 
And the years draw nigh, 

When thou shalt say, I have no pleasure ia them; 

"Before the sun 
And the light, 
And the moon, 
And the stars 
Are darkened, 

And the clouds return after the rain; 

"In the days when the keepers of the house shall tremble, 
And the strong men shall bow themselves, 
And the grinders shall cease because they are few, 
And those that look out of the windows shall be darkened, 
And the doors shall be shut in the street; 
When the sound of the grinding is low, 
And one shall rise up at the voice of a bird, 
And all the daughters of music shall be brought low; 

"Yea, they shall be afraid of that which is high, 
And terrors shall be in the way; 

"And the almond-tree shall blossom, 
And the grasshopper shall be a burden, 
And desire shall fail; 

"Because man goeth to his long home, 
And the mourners go about the streets: 

"Before the silver cord is loosed, 
Or the golden bowl is broken, 
Or the pitcher is broken at the fountain, 
Or the wheel broken at the cistern, 

"And the dust returneth to the earth 
As it was, 
And the spirit returneth unto God 
Who gave it." 



434 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



No modern writer has reached so lofty a 
height in portraying the slow crumbling to de- 
cay of man's house of life. 

But there is a field for thought and discus- 
sion concerning the possible beauty and glory 
of age, not often written about, but which, 
since its appeal is so universal to all who have 
reached or passed middle life, seems well worth 
more frequent consideration. 

God certainly has blundered in planning the 
cycle of man's life unless he has made it pos- 
sible for the aged man or woman to be beautiful 
and attractive and to make of the sunset epoch 
of human experience a time of beauty and 
blessed usefulness to the world. Since it is un- 
thinkable that the all-wise Creator and Ruler 
of the universe has blundered, we are forced to 
believe that not enough attention is given by 
men and women generally to preparing for 
what ought to be the sweetest and most beauti- 
ful period of our experience in this world. Is 
it not worth while to consider some of the char- 
acteristics of old age that make a man or wo- 
man who has reached that portion of the 
earthly journey peculiarly beautiful and at- 
tractive to others of life's voyagers ? 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



435 



I. A courageous old age is always attractive 
and inspiring. It is very dispiriting to both 
young and old when a man or woman ap- 
proaching old age is disposed to drop out of 
all helpful work and interest of the community 
of the church or the world, and to take old 
age, to use a common expression, "lying 
down." How much more good cheer is 
breathed from a person who faces age with 
courage to make the best of his ripened powers. 

Do you remember that wonderfully en- 
couraging scene which is portrayed in the book 
of Joshua? Where Caleb comes to Joshua on 
his eighty-fifth birthday and asks, not for an 
easy place, not to be given a territory that has 
been already conquered, where there are no 
enemies to overcome, but requesting that he 
be given the mountain of the giants with its 
walled cities, which he must batter down before 
he can enjoy his reward. 

I can imagine a venerable weakling in 
Caleb's place saying something like this: "Now 
Joshua, you and I were together forty-five 
years ago when we went with the committee to 
spy out the promised land. We two are all 
that are left and you surely ought to stand by 



436 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



your old comrade and give me an easy berth. 
Let these young men who have come into the 
fruits of our dangers and risks and hardships 
take the hard places; you ought to pick; out for 
me a nice rich valley, somewhere along a quiet 
river, where all the enemies have been driven 
out. Joshua, do you remember when we got 
those wonderfully luscious grapes in the valley 
of Eschol, where the milk and honey was so 
abundant and delicious it makes your mouth 
water yet to talk about it? There's the place 
for an old man like me. Be a good fellow, 
Joshua, and give me a safe, rich, happy ranch 
like that where I may spend my old age." 

Now, honestly, have you not known many 
old people whom you would expect to talk 
exactly in that strain? But how refreshing it 
is to turn from a weakling's whine to the 
glorious courage of a man eighty-five years 
young. It is Caleb's birthday, and the old man 
is full of the memories of his long life, and they 
are all mixed up with Joshua ; and so he comes 
to visit him and to make his plea for an inherit- 
ance for himself and family. It was, you will 
remember, at a time when they were dividing 
the land. Caleb, the old hero, had a right to 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



437 



first choice, and every one stood back with eyes 
and ears open to see what Caleb was going to 
do. This was Caleb's plea: "Forty years old 
was I when Moses the servant of the Lord sent 
me from Kadesh-barnea to espy out the land; 
and I brought him word again as it was in my 
heart. Nevertheless my brethren that went 
up with me made the heart of the people melt ; 
but I wholly followed the Lord my God. And 
Moses sware on that day, saying, Surely the 
land whereon thy feet have trodden shall be 
thine inheritance, and thy children's forever, 
because thou has wholly followed the Lord my 
God. And now, behold, the Lord hath kept 
me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, 
even since the Lord spake this word unto 
Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in 
the wilderness ; and now, lo, I am this day four- 
score and five years old. As yet I am as strong 
this day as I was in the day that Moses sent 
me: as my strength was then, even so is my 
strength now, for war, both to go out, and to 
come in. Now therefore give me this moun- 
tain, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for 
thou heardest in that day how the Anakim 
were there, and that the cities were great and 



438 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



fenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then 
I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord 
said." God bless the old hero! And give to 
our own great Republic in this critical age 
many old men with such spirit! 

II. A generous old age, seeking not its own 
but a blessing for others is always beautiful. 

You may see such a beauty in age revealed 
in Abraham's conduct when the herdsmen of 
Lot, his nephew, and his own herdsmen quar- 
reled about the pasture land. Then Abraham, 
in his large, generous way, called a family 
council and said to Lot, "We are brethren and 
it will not do for us to quarrel. You choose 
which way you prefer, east or west, and go in 
peace, and I will go the other way." Now if 
Lot had been as good metal as Abraham, he 
would have declined and insisted on his Uncle 
Abraham choosing; but Lot must have had 
some poor qualities in him from some side of 
his inheritance, and so he cast a greedy eye on 
the well-watered plains that stretched toward 
a rich cattle market in Sodom, and pitched his 
tent that way; while Abraham, with a friendly 
farewell turned his face toward a desert camp, 
where he built an altar to God and where 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



439 



angels again and again came to visit him. 
Poor Lot would never have lost his wife in a 
salt heap, nor all his wealth in corner lots in 
Sodom, if he had cultivated the generosity of 
Abraham. How beautifully this generosity 
shines out against the background of that self- 
ish age. No wonder all the desert tribes that 
knew the story said of the dear old man, "He 
is the friend of God." Generosity is as beauti- 
ful to-day, in this modern world, as it was in 
Abraham's day. 

III. A broadening mental vision, as well 
as a mellowing heart, is exceedingly attractive 
in old age. The acquiring of the habit of wide 
and broadening reading is one of the sweet 
methods of making the mind of age increas- 
ingly catholic in its interest. The reason why 
the minds of so many old people seem to shrivel 
up as they grow older is either that their in- 
terests are self -centered or that they have 
failed to cultivate wide and generous interest 
in or sympathy with the far-reaching needs of 
human life as a whole. What an illustration 
Mr. Gladstone was of a man becoming more 
progressive and broader in his sympathies as 
he grew older. The old man or woman ceases 



440 THE WINDS OF GOD 

to be attractive to youth when there is failure 
to grasp the hopes and desires and ambitions of 
the new generation. But if to ripe experience 
and gathered stores of wisdom age can add 
hospitality of mind to new ideas and rich sym- 
pathy for the aspirations of the new age ever 
coming on, it has a fascination for young life 
that surpasses anything possible in one of their 
own time. Nothing is so fascinating to the 
young as the wisdom and experience of age 
when united with a fresh mind, a young heart, 
and an eager expectancy of spirit for the 
golden age yet to come. Alas, that it should 
be so rare! But, thank God, it is possible for 
every one of us if we will pay the price. 

IV. Nothing is more beautiful in old age 
than a serene spirit — a contented, patient spirit 
born of a stedfast faith that God means good 
for the world and may be trusted to make all 
things work together for good to those who 
love him. Life is often compared to a river. 
It is a very interesting and fruitful comparison. 
See the little stream that issues from a bubbling 
spring near the top of some mountain, or on 
some wide-stretching, lofty plateau covered by 
a vast forest that holds the treasures of rain 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 441 

and snow. The little stream goes trickling 
down the way to the plain, gathering other 
spring rivulets to itself until it is large enough 
to have a song in its heart. It grows to be a 
brook, and other brooks unite in its fraternity, 
and it becomes a rushing mountain torrent. 
It dashes against the rocks in terraced water- 
falls; it splashes in white foaming beauty and 
throws itself into deep gorges; swings round 
and round in whirlpools ; ever growing in 
strength, it dashes and plunges on toward the 
wide-stretching plain, out of sight of the forest 
and the mountain that gave it birth. Then it 
gathers still other streams like itself into fel- 
lowship. It turns the wheels of industry. It 
furnishes power and light to illuminate cities 
and send cars, filled with traveling humanity, 
like shuttles through the streets and across the 
land. A hundred miles away from its source 
it turns lathes and spindles to bless the world. 
On, ever on, the river pours its ever widening, 
deepening current until it has left behind much 
of the rugged grandeur and the dashing, wild 
beauty of its earlier course ; but its usefulness, 
its power to bless, ever increases. Its floods 
become great enough to spare huge canals of 



442 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



life-giving streams to irrigate a broad plateau 
or a thirsty valley in summer's drouth and 
turn a sandy desert into a garden of Eden. 
Still on it flows in its God-planned course. It 
is broader, deeper than ever. Great steamers 
plow its bosom in safety. It is a vital artery 
of commerce. At last it hears the call of the 
great ocean and sweeps onward to meet the sea. 
Through its wide and generous mouth the tides 
of the great deep surge up its course, for a hun- 
dred miles, to welcome its fresh and bounteous 
waters. Vessels of the many nations bring 
commerce from the ends of the earth through 
its wide-open doors. A great human life, fol- 
lowing the divine plan, is like that. Babyhood 
is the spring gushing from the hillside; child- 
hood is the gurgling, singing, growing brook; 
youth is the dashing torrent with the white 
rapids and leaping waterfalls, exulting in the 
vigor of life. Manhood and womanhood com- 
ing into their own and bending their shoulders 
to the challenge of the work of the world, are 
the growing river with its mills and water 
wheels and electric power plants. And old 
age is the serene, splendid sweep of the full- 
grown river, deep and strong and quiet, hear- 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



443 



ing ever more consciously the call of the sea, 
and ever more responsive to the sublime fellow- 
ship of the great heart of mankind. God grant 
to every one of us the wisdom to grow and ex- 
pand into such a fruitful old age. 

V. A deepening love, an unselfish desire to 
bless the world, consideration for the comfort 
and happiness of those about us, revealing it- 
self in care for personal manners and conduct, 
and in the cultivation of a gentle and cheerful 
spirit — these are some of the characteristics of 
a beautiful old age. Then there is the develop- 
ment of a gladsome sense of humor, in ever 
seeking to see and make apparent the bright 
side of every happening of life, and making 
much of that which is good in other people. 
There is the cultivation of a habit of apprecia- 
tion of every kindness received, manifesting 
itself in expressions of gratitude to God and 
extending itself in kindly exprest apprecia- 
tion of every blessing, great or small, offered 
by any man, woman, or child, from the least 
to the highest. We ought to be careful not to 
carry into old age anything that can possibly 
mar or decrease the happiness of the people 
who live with us. 



444 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Sometimes ambassadors appointed to for- 
eign courts are refused acceptance and are re- 
turned to their own land, in bitter humiliation, 
because they have done or said something that 
makes them offensive to the country to which 
they are accredited. So we ought to censor 
ourselves with great care as we face toward the 
sunset, and make sure that no habit of speech 
or conduct, in the smallest detail, is allowed 
to cling to us to offend the most refined taste 
of some gentle and lovely soul or to decrease 
our power to give joy or comfort or blessing. 

It has often been said that the devil has no 
happy old people. The cultivation of the 
Christian graces alone can give to our char- 
acters and conduct that perfect fragrance 
which will make us beautiful and our presence 
and companionship delightful and desirable 
when we are such an one as "Paul the aged." 

There are some flowers so beautiful in color- 
ing and so sweet in fragrance that you do not 
need the skill or taste of the artist to make an 
attractive bouquet of them. Take a bunch of 
gorgeous lilies, an armful of glorious roses, a 
handful of sprays of honeysuckle or a hand's 
grasp of carnations. You may throw them to- 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



445 



gether in any careless way and they will glad- 
den the eye and sweeten the atmosphere and 
bring into the most cheerless room something 
of the summer-time glory of God's great out of 
doors. So let the most unattractive man or 
woman begin honestly to cultivate the spiritual 
graces which Paul learned of Jesus and recom- 
mends to us — love, peace, long-suffering, gen- 
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self- 
control — and let them blossom into smiles and 
kind words and self-denying and loving ac- 
tions, and it can not fail to transform the whole 
personality and produce a charming manhood 
or a lovely, fascinating womanhood down to 
the very last hour of life. The weakness and 
infirmity of age will serve only to bring into 
relief the attractiveness of these glorious graces 
which, unlike artificial flowers put on simply 
to adorn, but like the blooms that grow in the 
mellow richness of the garden soil, have about 
them something of the gracious warmth and 
rich sympathy absorbed from the sunshine and 
the showers from heaven's own skies. God 
grant to every one of us an old age redolent 
with the never-failing graces of the spirit! 
Thank God! they are within the reach of 



446 



THE WINDS GF GOD 



every one of us on the same terms. Gold can 
not buy them in any market. No powerful 
position can achieve them. No, it is the open 
secret of goodness. God can be had for the 
asking. Prayer is the open channel into the 
heart of heaven where the charm of goodness 
is the common atmosphere of living. The 
secret closet of the humblest home, the sick 
chamber of the sufferer, the chair of the cripple, 
the dungeon of a John Bunyan, may have 
direct communication with the garden of the 
angels. The poorest and weakest may associate 
in heart and soul with the holiest personalities 
of the universe of God and absorb the loveliness 
of the sweetest of God's saints of all ages. The 
marvelous miracle of the gospel is good enough 
to be true. The wicked sinner of our own time 
may through repentance of sin and by turning 
with all his heart to God, as did the wicked 
Saul of Tarsus, lose every vestige of repulsive- 
ness and evil, purify himself through a vision 
of Christ and the divine hope of the gospel un- 
til all the sweetness of heaven shall live in his 
heart and face and words and conduct, until 
he fills every room of life he enters with the 
fragrance and beauty of the skies. When his 



A BEAUTIFUL OLD AGE 



4-47 



day of translation shall come, he will realize 
the blessed promise of his Lord, that in the 
great day of revelation he shall see Jesus in all 
the radiant glory of his supreme loveliness and 
shall be like him. 

God breathe into all our hearts the noble 
purpose to achieve and realize in our own selves 
a beautiful old age like that ! 



THE BIBLE IDEAL OF A NOBLE 
WOMANHOOD 



"The elect lady."— 2 John 1 : 1. 

WOMAN'S noblest charter is in the Bible. 
Thousands of years ago, when women 
in other lands were only beasts of burden or 
playthings of man's caprice, in the nation that 
gave us the old Bible and out of whose midst 
came the Messiah who ushered in the new 
Bible, woman was a comrade and a personality, 
and was free to be a general or a poet or a 
singer or a ruler, if the divine gifts of brain and 
character warranted it for her. The book of 
Job comes to us from so far back in the dusty 
forgotten centuries that human history can 
give us no help about its authorship or story. 
But Job, the most progressive character in all 
that ancient world, gave his daughters inherit- 
ance on an equality with their brethren. And 
when Joshua was parceling out the inheritances 
in the promised land to the Hebrews, he gave 

448 



IDEAL OF A NOBLE WOMANHOOD 449 

to the daughters of Zelophehad land in the 
same allotment as if they had been men. 

Deborah tried to shame Barak into leading 
the hosts of God's people against Sisera; but 
when she could not rouse him to action, she 
girded her own loins with strength and in the 
confidence of her great faith in God went forth 
to victory, and afterward sang about it in a 
song that will last as long as the literature of 
mankind lives on the earth. 

Taken all in all the finest tribute to noble 
womanhood in ancient literature is that match- 
less paragraph in the book of Proverbs, as- 
cribed by the translators of our Bible to King 
Lemuel: 

"A worthy woman who ean find? 
For her price is far above rubies. 
The heart of her husband trusteth in her, 
And he shall have no lack of gain. 
She doeth him good and not evil 
All the days of her life. 
She seeketh wool and flax, 
And worketh willingly with her hands. 
She is like the merchant-ships; 
She bringeth her bread from afar. 
She riseth also while it is yet night, 
And giveth food to her household, 



450 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



And their task to her maidens. 

She considereth a field, and buyeth it; 

With the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. 

She girdeth her loins with strength, 

And maketh strong her arms. 

She perceiveth that her merchandise is profitable; 

Her lamp goeth not out by night. 

She layeth her hands to the distaff, 

And her hands hold the spindle. 

She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; 

Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 

She is not afraid of the snow for her household; 

For all - her household are clothed with scarlet. 

She maketh for herself carpets of tapestry; 

Her clothing is fine linen and purple. 

Her husband is known in the gates, 

When he sitteth among the elders of the land. 

She maketh linen garments and selleth them, 

And delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 

Strength and dignity are her clothing; 

And she laugheth at the time to come. 

She openeth her mouth with wisdom; 

And the law of kindness is on her tongue. 

She looketh well to the ways of her household, 

And eateth not the bread of idleness. 

Her children rise up, and call her blessed; 

Her husband also, and he praiseth her, saying: 

Many daughters have done worthily, 

But thou excellest them all. 

Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain; 

But a woman that feareth Jehovah, she shall be praised. 

Give her of the fruit of her hands; 

And let her works praise her in the gates." 



Considering the age in which that paragraph 
was written, it is the most progressive piece of 



IDEAL OF A NOBLE WOMANHOOD 451 

literature concerning womanhood that has ever 
been penned by the hand of man. 

This good woman whom John, the apostle of 
love, has made immortal by his brief letter 
written in loving and faithful friendship so long 
ago, was of this high type, beyond tloubt a 
faithful and reliable lover of the truth in Chris- 
tian living, whose noble character and devotion 
to righteousness made her a beloved person- 
ality to the great-hearted Apostle John, and 
John says she was one beloved by all those who 
loved the truth in her time. 

Let us study briefly some of the outstanding 
characteristics of that noble womanhood which 
fills the Bible ideal. 

I. First, she was clothed with strength and 
dignity. She was no mere butterfly of the 
fashion plate or the giddy round of social life. 
She knew how to direct her maids and appor- 
tion their tasks, for she herself knew how the 
work should be done. She was mistress in her 
own house. Pier keen eye saw the needs of her 
family and her home, and she saw to it that 
those needs were met. She was forehanded. 
Her work did not crowd her; she crowded it. 
She could laugh at the coming of winter, for 



452 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



the clothing was ready and her linen closet was 
full. But she was broad-minded, the comrade 
and equal of her husband. She knew how to 
judge soils and buy lands and plant vineyards. 
She knew how to manufacture for the markets 
and to import, from other lands, what she and 
her home needed for their comfort. She was 
the mainstay of her husband. She gave him 
such comfort and courage and so nerved him 
up to his work and counseled him so wisely 
that when he went out in public to take his 
place in the city council or in the management 
of the government he was a man to be respected 
and heeded, and of whom she could be proud. 
She was his "Woman-who-understands." 
Happy, indeed, the man with a wife who holds 
his honor and his equipment for useful man- 
hood in the work of his day as her loyal trust. 
How splendid is the true dignity of a woman 
like that! Well did King Lemuel say, 
"Strength and dignity are her clothing," and 
well does John call her "the elect lady." 

II. She is aggressively good. This strong, 
dignified, Christian womanhood is immune 
from many of the ordinary temptations 
that attack and destroy more feeble per- 



IDEAL OF A NOBLE WOMANHOOD 453 

sonalities. She fears God. She is full of gen- 
erous thought for the poor; she holds herself 
as trustee under God for all the needy her 
strong, helpful hands can reach. Such a 
woman is a moral tonic in her home as well as 
in her church and community. She is so full 
of the abounding, overflowing vitality of good- 
ness, which she gets from God and her fellow- 
ship with his work in the world, that ten thou- 
sand temptations and weaknesses dangerous to 
others fall as did the arrows of the primitive 
Mexicans when they struck against the Cas- 
tilian armor worn by Pizarro and his Spanish 
explorers. 

When a great epidemic sweeps the country, 
just a breath of it seems to overcome the deli- 
cate and the weak, while people full of virile 
life pass through the midst of contagion again 
and again, armored with such vigor that 
microbes and germs fall powerless. Some- 
times people looking on say of them, "They 
wear a charmed life" ; and it is true, for there 
is no charm that can protect life so well as hav- 
ing an abundance of life. Jesus said that he 
came that we might have life and that our life 
might abound, and there are none so safe from 



454 



THE WINDS OF GGD 



the ordinary temptations and sins of the world 
as those who live with wholesome, hearty pur- 
pose to bless the world and work together with 
God to save it. 

III. Of course such a womanhood is wise — 
"She openeth her mouth with wisdom." Wis- 
dom is like everything else; it grows by exer- 
cise. An earnest woman, fearing God, loving 
his service, unselfishly seeking to answer her 
own prayers for the people in her own home 
and neighborhood by stretching out her willing 
faithful hands to bless them, grows wisdom as a 
rich, well-watered meadow grows grass in the 
springtime. Wisdom grows by exercise just as 
muscle does in the body of a vigorous, working 
youth. Watkinson tells us that there is in na- 
ture a mollusk with eleven thousand eyes, and 
as the shell grows the eyes still multiply. So a 
good woman, wise with the wisdom of noble 
purpose and high fellowship with the divine 
plan of blessing the world about her, becomes 
full of eyes of inspirations, perceptions, sensi- 
bilities, so that she becomes, under God's lead- 
ing hand, the wisest counselor among her 
friends. 

IV. She is kind. Such a woman could not 



ILEAL OF A yOBLE WOMAyHOOL 



455 



be other than kind. "The law of kindness is 
on her tongue." Whittier tells of one of her 
number: 

"Sweet prompting-? unto kindest deeds 
"Were in her look : 
"We read her face, as one who reads 
A true and holy book." 

God. who made woman as a wise after- 
thought to comfort man's loneliness and 
strengthen man's weakness, seems to have put 
into her heart a double portion of that mar- 
velous alchemy of life which we call kindness. 
How woman's kindness blesses the world! Xot 
only in the person of the white-robed nurse in 
the hospital, or in the Salvation Army lass 
frying doughnuts under fire on the edge of the 
trenches in France and Belgium, or in a Red 
Cross worker who tears her skirt to pieces to 
bind up the wounds of a dying youth in a 
strange land: but in quiet homes where a good 
woman gladly uses her substance and her love 
to bless some lonelier younger woman by tak- 
ing her into her motherly heart and giving to 
her the background of her broad bosom of love 
and power. 

Above all else on earth every true man 



456 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



should thank God for true womanhood. For 
every woman who fails to bless the world there 
are a thousand who are a benediction from hea- 
ven. Charles Mackey truly says: 

"Woman may err, woman may give her mind 

To evil thoughts, and lose her pure estate; 
But for one woman who affronts her kind 

By wicked passions and remorseless hate, 
A thousand make amends in age and youth, 

By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy, 
By patient kindness, by enduring truth, 

By love, supremest in adversity." 

And I thank God that the Bible story makes 
it sure that the power of God to redeem women 
and transform sinners into saints is as trium- 
phant as in the case of men. Saul, touched by 
the voice of Jesus and the power of the Holy 
Spirit, was transformed into Paul, the great 
apostle to the Gentiles, but it is not a whit more 
wonderful than what happened when poor 
soiled Mary Magdalene was changed into that 
saintly woman who came to Jesus in the man- 
sion of Simon and bathed the Savior's feet 
with her tears and wiped them with the golden 
hair falling from above her own redeemed 
brow. The perfume with which she anointed 



IDEAL OF A NOBLE WOMANHOOD 457 

the head of Jesus has filled the world with its 
fragrance until this hour. 

There is an old discouraging line which says 
that a bird with a broken wing will never fly as 
high again; but I like better the song which 
puts it in another light: 



"In song, in speech, and in story, 
Sounds ever the sad refrain: 
The bird with the broken pinion 
Soars never so high again! 

"And the listening heart grows heavy, 
And deeper the lines of care; 
For few there be but encounter 
And enter the fowler's snare. 

"And the 'Surely He shall deliver* 
Seems robbed of its joyous strain, 
When we hear that the broken pinion 
Soars never so high again! 

"'But hark to the song of triumph: 
And gaze on the wondrous flight! 
For sure as our strength is weakness, 
So surely His strength is might ! 

"No fear from the flight of the arrow 
When He has delivered His own; 

The soaring wing was but weaker 
"When it trusted its strength alone! 

"For the bird with the broken pinion, 
Or the heart with the scarlet stain, 
When borne aloft by His angels, 
Sinks never so low again." 



458 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Surely I could not more appropriately close 
this brief but heartfelt tribute to noble Chris- 
tian womanhood than to call your attention for 
a single moment to this graphic and richly sug- 
gestive comparison made by the writer of the 
paragraph with which we began our study : 

"She is like the merchant's ships; 
She bringeth her bread from afar." 

What a splendid picture! It is the olden day 
of the sailing vessel. A ship is coming into the 
harbor with a cargo from afar. She has been 
in distant ports; she has faced the storms and 
scudded the gale under bare masts; she has 
fought her way against head winds and wal- 
lowed through days of sickening calm. But 
she has weathered all seas and has come home 
laden with rich treasure. She has kept her 
cargo secure and brought it safely in. As she 
beats her way in from the open sea, with her 
white sails gleaming in the sun like the wings 
of some great white gull, she is a vision to 
gladden the eye and quicken the imagination 
and stir the heart. There is the Bible picture 
of a good woman who, in noble Christian faith 



IDEAL OF A NOBLE WOMANHOOD 459 

and holy fellowship and Christlike service, 
having finished her voyage, comes into the 
harbor of old age with the smile of God in her 
face and the graces of the Spirit in her mind 
and heart. Surely she is the noblest exhibit of 
the power and mercy and goodness of God ! 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 

"Ye are our letter, written in our heart . . . declared 
to be the letter of Christ . . . written not with ink, but 
with the spirit of the living God ; not in tables of stone, but 
in fleshly tables of the heart."— 2 Cor. 3 : 2, 3. 

IN the common language of the age in which 
the New Testament was written, the 
twenty-four more or less private and personal 
letters which are bound together in our Bible 
are called "epistles"; but as that word has 
gone entirely out of use in our day, I have 
translated it in this study into the word 
"letter," which means to us exactly what the 
word "epistle" meant to the people of the 
earlier time. These letters form the major por- 
tion of the New Testament and are of as much 
interest to the Christian people of to-day as 
they were to those who read them in the 
original manuscripts in the handwriting of 
their authors. 

Fourteen of these letters were written by 
Paul, running from that long letter we ordi- 

460 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOB 461 

narily call the "book of Romans" to the little 
personal letter Paul wrote from Rome to 
Philemon when he sent back to him his run- 
away slave, Onesimus, who had been happily 
converted to Christianity through conversa- 
tions with Paul while Paul was a prisoner in 
Rome. One was written by James, the brother 
of Jesus; two by Peter, one of the Galilean 
fishermen among Christ's disciples. Three 
were written by John, "the disciple whom 
Jesus loved/' who also wrote one of the biog- 
raphies of Jesus and the book of Revelation. 
He, next to Paul, was the most voluminous 
and attractive writer of the New Testament, 
tho Luke, with his noble biography of Christ 
and his luminous story of the first years of 
Christianity in the Acts of the Apostles, makes 
a splendid third in this wonderful trinity of 
New Testament authors. 

These letters are a rich storehouse of teach- 
ing and warning and reproof and encourage- 
ment to all who seek to live the Christian life. 
They are in deed and in truth God's love letters 
to all who strive to be Christians. 

Just as when we are deprest and dis- 
couraged and almost crusht under the burden 



462 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of loneliness, a love letter full of the warmth of 
sympathy and tenderness coming to us from 
the hand and heart of one very dear to us lifts 
us out of the slough of despondency into 
joyous courage and rapturous delight; the step 
no longer lags, and the face glows with a new 
flush of hope and good cheer; so many a beaten 
and baffled soul has found in these wonderful 
letters, written so long ago, a new message of 
comfort and sympathy that has made them the 
love letters of God which have quickened the 
spiritual life anew. 

But this is not the theme I wish to bring to 
your attention at this time. Our text suggests 
to us a more vitally personal theme for study — 
that each one of us who attempts to live a life 
of obedience to God, through fellowship with 
Christ and trust in him as our Redeemer and 
Lord, are, ourselves, each one individually, a 
separate and distinct love letter from God to 
those who read us in the conduct of our daily 
lives. The personal character of a Christian 
man or woman who lives true to God's direc- 
tion is a love letter from God to those who 
read it. 

I. The Engraving of God. The word char- 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 463 

acter comes from the old art of engraving. It 
is taken from the word cliarasso — to engrave. 
It refers to work done on metal or in stone and 
in later days on wood. Some of the old works 
of art took long years of toil to accomplish. 
Da Vinci worked constantly for four years on 
"Mona Lisa," and said it was still unfinished. 
Andrea Cartello is said to have spent twelve 
years engraving the "Last Supper" on a topaz, 
which he presented to PojDe Leo at his jubilee. 

But our text declares that the Holy Spirit is 
the engraver who inscribes the character of 
Christ on our hearts when we yield them as 
tablets to be so used by the Divine Engraver. 
How it lifts our lives out of the transitory and 
wind-swept dust of earthliness, and elevates us 
into the dignity of divine fellowship, to be told 
that the Holy Spirit, the active, energizing 
Worker in the Holy Trinity, who created and 
rules this vast universe, is willing to become 
the amanuensis who writes on the fleshly tables 
of our hearts the glorious character of the 
Christ, so that men, seeing and reading that 
divine writing in our words and spirit and daily 
deeds, may find there a love letter from the 



464 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



God from whom they have wandered and be 
called back to him. 

II. The love letters written in our hearts 
one by one must always be the chief method 
and the most efficient method of winning the 
world to Christ. 

The story of David Livingstone in his world- 
famed work in Africa gives us a vivid illustra- 
tion. Livingstone went into the heart of 
Africa to bring Christ to the natives of desert 
and wilderness, but they had no written or 
printed language, and the only way he could 
show them Jesus was in himself. How royally 
he did it! 

Painted savages could not fail to see the face 
of the loving Christ engraved on the heart of 
Livingstone by the engraving tool of the Spirit 
of the living God. And then into the heart of 
that vast unknown Africa came Henry M. 
Stanley on his search for the great Christian 
explorer. Stanley had lived a hard life. He 
had been hardened in all his best instincts and 
impulses by an almost incredible experience as 
a child in an English workhouse of the old 
cruel, brutal type. Then he had been kicked 
from pillar to post by the rough heels of fate 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 465 

until he came to manhood. His native virility 
of mind had finally come into control, and he 
had become a keen-brained, unusually efficient 
newspaper reporter and journalist with a re- 
markable power of looking into the secret 
workings of human nature. He was especially 
acute and expert in reading the motives of men 
and women. He was an infidel. His hard life 
had shut the doors of his faith in God and 
Christ and the possibilities of Christlike char- 
acter. This was the man who went into the 
wilderness of a dark continent to find Living- 
stone. And when he found him, he did not 
know what to make of him at first. But he 
tells us that as he lived with him day by day, 
heard his conversation and saw his conduct 
toward the natives and toward him, he him- 
self changed. He saw Christ in David Living- 
stone and that love letter from God was the 
cause of the conversion of Henry M. Stanley. 

Eliot and Duncan, the great missionaries to 
the Indians, were similar love letters from God 
to those children of the forest and the plains. 

Now God did not let down on Livingstone or 
Eliot or Duncan the ready-to-wear gift of 
Christian character any more than he does on 



466 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



us. Character must be engraved by the Holy 
Spirit day by day as we hold ourselves 
patiently and loyally to do the will of God in 
single and often seemingly unimportant deeds. 
Look at that most splendid illustration in the 
Old Bible: two thousand five hundred and 
twenty-six years ago Daniel was carried away 
from his home to Babylon. Surrounded by 
every vice and pleasurable sin to tempt him 
from his fidelity to the God of his fathers, 
Daniel vowed not to defile himself; and he 
proved in that land of godless materialism 
that nothing can separate a man, young or old, 
from God, if he simply does right day by day. 
Every day — not now and then, but every day 
— Daniel opened his window toward Jeru- 
salem, where his heart was, and prayed to God. 
He did it as on other days, tho he knew the 
spies were waiting to take him to the den of 
lions. He went into the den of lions, but he 
came out to be a love letter from God to a 
nation. 

III. God can always use a soul on which to 
print his love letters for the world, if that soul 
cares more about being right than about 
making a worldly success. If we follow Christ 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 



467 



and are to be his engravings, we must expect 
to go to the cross. Daniel had to go to the den 
of lions, and Christ had to go to his cross. The 
path of all true greatness of character, of all 
holy, uplifting influence on the world, is strewn 
with failures. I like the song of some one who 
sings : 

"I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the 
battle of life — 

The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died over- 
whelmed in the strife. 

Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the 
resounding acclaim 

Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore 
the chaplet of fame — 

But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, 
the broken in heart, 

Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent 
and desperate part. 

******* 

"While the voice of the world shouts its chorus; its 
paean for those who have won — 
While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and high 

to the breeze and the sun 
Gay banners are waving, hands clapping, and hurrying 
feet 

Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors — I stand 
on the field of defeat 

In the shadow, 'mongst those who are fallen and 
wounded, and dying — and there 

Chant a requiem low, place my hand on the pain- 
knotted brows, breathe a prayer, 



468 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper: 

'They only the victory win 
Who have fought the good fight and have vanquished 

the demon that tempts us within. 
Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize 

that the world holds on high; 
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, 

fight — if need be, to die V 

"Speak, History, who are life's victors? 

Unroll thy long annals and say — 
Are they those whom the world called the victors, 

Who won the success of the day? 
The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell at 

Thermopylae's tryst, 
Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or 

Socrates, Pilate or Christ?" 

Now we must not rob ourselves of the bless- 
ing this study ought to bring to us by de- 
preciating our own possible value to God and 
humanity. The great work of the world must 
be done by the men with one talent, who each 
in his own home and by his own fireside does 
his duty faithfully. The humble, unknown, 
average Christian home is the bed-rock, the 
real bulwark and fortress, of the nation's life. 
It is not the great leaders upon whom a nation 
or a race must depend — a David, or a Living- 
stone or an Abraham Lincoln — but the great 
rank and file of noble, unknown souls of whom 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 



469 



these leaders are but the flowering. There 
must be a thousand shepherd lads of poetic 
spirit and the dauntless courage of faith in 
God to blossom one David. The great hope 
of the world must ever be in the average man 
or woman who surrenders himself or herself to 
life's common duties in a spirit of divine faith 
and fidelity, — 

"The great brave hearts, oh, they beat, beat, beat 
'Neath the humble coat in the lowly street! 
The great brave hearts are the hearts that sing, 
When the winter roars, that they know the spring 
Will come back warm with the flush and ray 
Of the olden glow of the golden May. 

"The great brave hearts are the hearts that feel 
For another's care with a sense made real 
By their own black hour and their own long night 
In the rough turmoil and the uphill fight 
That has led them on to the gleam at last, 
With the conflict won and the shadows past. 

"The great brave hearts are the hearts that go 
Through the weeks and years on the round they know 
Of patient duty and toil and love, 
As they sing with the stars that sing above 
And smile with the sun and through the strife 
Make sun in the world for a comrade's life." 

Yes, there it is, they "make sun in the world 
for a comrade's life," which is but another way 



470 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



of saying that they become God's love letter to 
that comrade. 

IV. The very memory of us may become a 
love letter to those with whom we have lived 
after we are gone. If the father and mother 
fill the home, no matter if it is the humblest in 
the land, with an atmosphere of love and un- 
affected worship day by day, tho their children 
go out into a life as hard and trying as Daniel 
found in Babylon, with all the power of a love 
letter the memory of that family altar will 
live in the mind of each boy and girl that grew 
up in that home of reverence and true religion 
long after the father and mother have gone to 
their reward. 

How different from the homes nominally 
Christian only, where children go out into life 
with no sacred memories to hold them to God! 
Oh, fathers, mothers, I pray God it may never 
be asked of any one of you in the great day of 
assize, "Where is the flock that was given thee, 
thy beautiful flock? What wilt thou say when 
he shall punish thee?" It were better to live 
in a log cabin with true religion than in a man- 
sion with God forgotten. Robert Burns' Cot- 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 471 

ter's Saturday Night has still a message worth- 
while to us in the twentiety century : 

"Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, 

In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide, 

Devotion's every grace, except the heart! 
The Power incensed, the pageant will desert, 

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 
But happily, in some cottage far apart, 

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul; 
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll." 

V. Let us not lose the thought that our sal- 
vation, our religion, and our influence on our 
neighbor are all strictly personal. Do you per- 
sonally know Christ or have you only heard 
about him? There is a very great difference. 
Do you remember those people whom Luke 
tells us about in the Acts, who lived in Paul's 
time and undertook to cast out evil spirits in 
the name of Jesus and said to the evil spirit, 
"I adjure you by Jesus, whom Paul preacheth" 
and the evil spirit answered: "Jesus I know, 
and Paul I know, but who are ye?" Dear 
friends, let us be sure it is not some one else's 
Savior, but our own, in whom we believe and 
trust and live. 

If I speak to any one who does not know 



472 



THE WINDS OF GOD 



Jesus as a personal Redeemer and Friend, I 
offer him to you in all the earnestness of my 
soul. He is knocking now at the door of your 
heart. Open the door with a welcoming hand 
and he will come in as a guest full of love and 
blessing. He will not only be your friend, he 
will become your partner for life. He will 
enter into your business, your friendships, your 
joys, your sorrows. He will put his own shoul- 
der by your side under your burden. He will 
put his neck into the other end of your yoke of 
duty and the yoke will become easy and the 
burden will become gloriously light. 

There is no other partner or friend like 
Jesus Christ. He took John and James and 
Peter from their half -worn fishing nets by a 
little inland lake, and led them forth to culture 
and blessing until they joined the ranks of the 
immortals in filling the world with the un- 
searchable riches of the love of God. No mat- 
ter how unworthy or untrustworthy you feel 
yourself to be, Jesus will never refuse you his 
partnership, his help, or his friendship on that 
account. He "came to seek and to save that 
which was lost." "He came not to call the 
righteous, but sinners, to repentance." Give 



THE LOVE LETTERS OF GOD 



473 



him your heart and let him lead you, and ere 
long you will find yourself singing: 

"I have a Friend so precious, so very dear to me; 
He loves me with such tender love, He loves so faithfully, 
I could not live apart from Him, I love to feel Him nigh; 
And so we walk together, my Lord and I. 

"I tell Him all my sorrows, I tell Him all my joys; 
I tell Him all that pleases me, I tell Him what annoys. 
He tells me what I ought to do, He tells me how to try; 
And so we walk together, my Lord and I." 



Books by ■ 

DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS. 



Christ and His Friends* 

A Collection of Revival Sermons, Simple and Direct, and Wholly 
Devoid of Oratorical Artifice, but Rich in Natural Eloquence, and 
Burning with Spiritual Fervor. The author has strengthened 
and enlivened them with many illustrations and anecdotes. 
12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, Rough Edges. Price, $1.75. 

National Presbyterian, Indianapolis: " One of the most marked revivals 
attended their delivery, resulting in hundreds of conversions. Free from extrav- 
agance and fantasticism, in good taste, dwelling upon the essentials of religious 
faith, their power has not heen lost in transference to the printed page." 

New York Observer: " These sermons are mainly hortatory . . . always 
aiming at conviction or conversion. They abound in fresh and forcible illus- 
trations. . . . They furnish a fine specimen of the best way to reach the popular 
ear, and may be commended as putting the claims of the Gospel upon men's at- 
tention in a very direct and striking manner. No time is wasted in rhetorical 
ornament, but every stroke tells upon the main point." 



The Fisherman and His Friends* 

A Companion Volume to " Christ and His Friends," consisting of 
Thirty-one Stirring Revival Discourses, full of Stimulus and Sug- 
gestion for Ministers, Bible class Teachers, and all Christian 
Workers and Others who Desire to become Proficient in the 
Supreme Capacity of Winning Souls to Christ. They furnish a 
rich store of fresh spiritual inspiration, their subjects being strong, 
stimulating, and novel in treatment, without being sensational or 
elaborate. They were originally preached by the author in a 
successful series of revival meetings, which resulted in many 
conversions. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top. Price, $1.75. 

Bishop John F. Hurst: "It is a most valuable addition to our devotional 
literature." 

New YorK Independent : " There is no more distinguished example of the 
modern people's preacher in the American pulpit to-day than Dr. Banks. TWt 
volume fairly thrills and rocks with the force injected into Us utterance" 



BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS — Continued. 



Paul and His Friends. 

A companion volume to " Christ and His Friends," " The Fisher- 
man and His Friends," and "John and His Friends," being sim- 
41 >rly bound and arranged. The book contains thirty-one stir- 
ring revival sermons delivered in a special series of revival ser- 
vices at the First M. E. Church, Cleveland. 12mo, Cloth, Gilt 
Top, Rough Edges. Price, $1.75. 

Inter Ocean, Chicago: "The addresses are markedly practical, eloquent, 
sarnest, and persuasive. Dr. Banks will especially interest the young. His 
illustrations are apt and pointed, and he gathers his facts from the wide range of 
literature past and present." 

John and His Friends* 

Thirty- three clear, straight, and forceful revival sermons, texts 
from the Gospel of John. They are of the same general charac- 
ter and excellence as the sermons contained in the three preced- 
ing volumes of this series. A companion volume to "Paul and 
His Friends," "The Fisherman and His Friends," and "Christ 
and His Friends." 12mo, Cloth, Gilt Top, Rough Edges, 297 
pages. Cover Design in Gold, Bronze, and Black. Piice, $1.75. 

The Burlington Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa: " A very gracious revival 
of religion was awakened by their delivery. " 

The Bookseller Newsdealer, and Stationer, New York: "Those who 
have read Dr. Banks's previous books need not be told that these sermons are 
original and practical and full of interesting illustrations and anecdotes. 1 ' 

Philadelphia Evening Item: "Revival literature has seldom if ever 
received so large a contribution from one man." 

David and His Friends. 

Thirty-one forceful revival sermons similar in general character 
to those in the preceding volumes of the " Friends " series. Texts 
from Samuel and the Psalms. A companion volume to " Christ 
and His Friends," etc. 12mo, Cloth, 320 pages, Gilt Top, Rough 
Edges. Price $1.75. 

The Christian Guide, Louisville: "Will be sure of a hearty welcome from 
a multitude of preachers and religious workers who have found the preceding 
volumes so helpful and inspiring." 

The Outlook, New York: "Evangelical, ethical, pointed with apt personal 
interest and narrative, every one of these sermons is a well-aimed arrow." 

Chicago Times-Herald : " The sermons are not in the least orations, nor 
is their power in formal argument. It is rather in the power there is in state- 
ment and in pertinent illustration." 

Hartford Courant : " These are the sort of sermons to be read at home, or 
even by a lay reader in the absence of the clergyman, for they are sufficiently 
graphic to dispense with a personal exponent." 

The Christian Advocate, Detroit : "They are practical and are illus- 
trated with everyday incidents. The author finds very striking subjects for hig 
discourses. 



BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS — Continued. 



On the Trail of Moses* 

Thirty-one revival sermons revealing a wealth of suggestions 
and illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, gilt top, rough edges. $1.75. 

Christian Index: "Dr. Banks has great facility in expressing themes that 
are pertinent to the lives people actually live, and his command of effective illus- 
trsfv'.on is exceptional." 

Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia: "One wonders at the variety of prac- 
tical subjects all bearing on the every-day problems and needs of present-day life 
that he finds in the story of the great law-giver. The preacher will find in them 
a rich mine of illustrated material of a sort that really illumines.'" 



The Unexpected Christ* 

A series of thirty evangelistic sermons written in Dr. Banks's 
characteristic style. 12mo, Cloth, 32S pp. $1.75. 

Bishop VV. F. MaJIalieu, D.D., LL.D.: " These sermons abound <n hints, 
suggestions, and illustrations that will be helpful to the preacher." 



Twentieth Century Knighthood* 

Helpful addresses to young men in which examples of ancient 
chivalry are used to illustrate modern conditions. A companion 
volume to "The Christian Gentleman" and "My Young Man." 
12mo, Cloth, 142 pp. $1.00. 

Herald and Presbyter, St. Louis: "It forms an irresistible appeal to young 
men to become, in very truth, twentieth century knights." 

The Detroit Free Press : " The book abounds in pertinent anecdotes illus- 
trating the virtues and beauties of a lofty Christian standard of manhood, and 
appeals to the highest and noblest qualities in young men, which may well be 
strengthened and developed by its perusal." 

The Literary World, Boston: "Ten short practical appeals to the young 
men of the time to carry into modern life the instincts and principles which made 
cnivalry what it was in the middle ages, with especial emphasis on sexual party, 
temperance, and reverence for women." 



Windows for Sermons* 

A study of the art of sermonic illustration with 400 fresh illus- 
trations suited for sermons and reform addresses. 12mo, Cloth, 
440 pp. $1.75. 

Western Presbyterian : •* The illustrations should be worth many times 
the price of the book to the hard worked pastor." 

Boston Journal; "This bulky volume contains a multitude of bright, 
practical ideas." 

The Standard, Chicago: ; 'The illustrations given are fresh, suggestive, and 
eriginal, and will be found valuable to the preacher and lecturer." 

Baltimore Methodist: "No minister of the gospel or ether speaker ob 
great moral problems will ever regret the purchase of this book." 



BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS-Continued. 



Anecdotes and Morals* 

Five hundred and fifty -nine attractive and forceful lessons which 
may be profitably utilized by the public speaker to freshly illus- 
trate divine truth. They are composed of incidents of vital 
interest, which have happened throughout the world. 12mo, 
Buckram, Gilt Top, Uncut Edges, 463 pages. Price, $1.75. 

Boston Journal: "More than half a thousand anecdotes, some witty, all 
pointed and instructive, make up this unusual book. His anecdotes all have a 
purpose, and are prettily expressed." 

The Globe-Democrat, St. Louis: "The index to the contents and the sys- 
tem of cross-references make the stories immediately available to whomever 
wishes to use them in illustration. 1 ' 

The Lutheran Observer, Lancaster, Ta. : " They are aptly related and 
always enforce the truths intended." 

Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati: "Altho there are so many selections, 
each new page contains some original lessons and a constant variety is main- 
tained throughout." 

The Christian Observer, Louisville, Ky.: "In this collection are found 
many anecdotes that are striking, well pat, ana in good taste." 

Poetry and Mor als» 

Clear, straight, and forceful lessons emphasized by familiar pas- 
sages of prose and poetry. The author has arranged several 
hundred simple truths in paragraphs appropriately headed in 
full-face type. The truths are explained in a few terse sentences, 
and then a verse, entire poem, or prose selection having direct 
bearing on the truth is added, forming a perfect storehouse of 
suggestive material for the preacher and writer. A companion 
volume to "Anecdotes and Morals." 12mo, Cloth, 399 Pages, 
$1.75. 

A Year's Prayer-Meeting Talks. 

Fifty-two suggestive and inspiring talks for prayer-meetings. 
Helpful material is provided for a whole year's weekly meetings. 
The talks have been already used by Dr. Banks in a most success- 
ful series of services. The author's well-known skill in present- 
ing the old truths in bright and striking ways is evidenced in 
these interesting talks. The book is designed to be a right-hand 
aid for preachers and religious workers. 12mo, Cloth. Price $1 .25. 

Christian Work, New York: " The reader will be sure to be attracted and 
helped by such talks as these." 

Baptist Outlook, Indianapolis: "Anecdotes, stories, bright similes, and 
poetical quotations enliven the talks." 

Boston Times : " The subjects are treated in original ways, but never in a 
sensational or unwholesome manner." 



BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS Continued. 



The Christian Gentleman* 

A volume of original and practical addresses to young men. The 
addresses were originally delivered to large and enthusiastic 
audiences of men, in Cleveland, at the Young Men's Christian 
Association Hall. 12mo, Buckram. Price, $1.00. 

My Young Man, 

Practical and straightforward talks to young men. They are 
devoted to the consideration of the young man in his relationships 
as a son, a brother, a member of society, a lover, a husband, a 
citizen, a young man and his money, and the young man as him- 
self. 12mo, Cloth, Cover Design. Price, $1.00. 

Central Christian Advocate, St. Louis, Mo,: "There are ten of them— 
brief, pointed, practical, luminous with illustrations and with, poetical citations." 

The Winds of God. 

A series of vigorous, soul-stirring sermons built upon the more 
unusual texts, illustrated aptly with anecdotes and poetry, in 
simple and dignified language appealing strongly to the best in 
man. 12mo, Cloth. Price, $1.75. 

The Saloon-Keeper's Ledger. 

The business and financial side of tha drink question. 12mo, 
Cloth. Price, $1.00. 

The Christian Herald, Detroit: "The discourses are the masterpieces of 
an expert, abounding in apt illustrations and invincible logic, sparkling with 
anecdote, and scintillating with unanswerable facts." 

Sermon Stories for Boys and Girls* 

Short stories of great interest, with which are interwoven lessons 
of practical helpfulness for young minds. 12mo, Cloth, Artistic 
Cover Design, Illustrated. Price, $1.25. 

Christian Advocate, New York: "They are expressed in the freshness 
and simplicity of child language." 

The Burlington Hawk-Eye : " He catches the eyes and ears of his hearers 
by bright little stories about animals, events in current life, and interesting 
features of nature, and then with rare skill, makes each of these stories carry a 
helpful message." 

Globe, Toronto, Canada: " There are quickening tales of Lincoln's human- 
ity, and one of General Lee, who imperiled his life under fire by pausing to 
replace a nest of young birds dislodged Dy a shell." 

Religious Herald, Hartford, Conn.: "The book is a character guide-book 
which must prove of inestimable assistance to mothers, teachers, and pastors." 



BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS-Continued. 



Seven Times Around Tericho. 

Seven Strong and Stirring Temperance Discourses, in which 
Deep Enthusiasm is Combined with Rational Reasoning— A 
Refreshing Change from the Conventional Temperance Argu- 
ments. Pathetic incidents and stories are made to carry most 
convincingly their vital significance to the subjects discussed. 
They treat in broad manner various features of the question. 
12mo, Handsomely Bound in Polished Buckram. Price, §1.00. 

Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati: "The book is sure to be a power for 
good. The discourses have the true ring. 1 ' 

Jersey City News: " Such able discourses as these of Dr. Banks will won. 
derfully help the great work of educating and arousing the people to their duty.', 

Ammunition for Final Drive on Booze. 

An up-to-date collection of addresses and arguments for pro- 
hibition speakers. 12mo, Cloth, $1.75. 

Sermons "Which Have "Won Souls. 

A number of powerful evangelical sermons together with 
advice on following up inquirers. 12mo, Cloth, 61.75. 

Baltimore Methodist: " Dr. Banks is a man of God, finding his way direct 
to the heart of the people by plain, forcible, fearless proclamation of the truth.'" 

Spurgeon's Illustrative Anecdotes. 

A large collection of striking anecdotes calculated to point a 
moral, arranged under subjects and topics. 12mo, Cloth, $1.75. 

The Problems of Youth. 

A series of character-building discourses for young people 
from the book of Proverbs. 12mo, Cloth, $1.75. 

Baltimore Sun: "Full of vigor, abreast of the times in feeling and 
possest of delightful literary qualities." 

The World's Childhood. 

A study of the art of sermonic illustration, with 400 fresh examples 
suitable for use in sermons, addresses, etc. 12mo, Cloth, $1.75. 

The Sinner and His Friends. 

A volume of soul-stirring evangelistic sermons that burn with 
fire and glow with sympathy. 12mo, Cloth, $1.75. 

The Sunday Evening Evangel. 

A series of moving and instructive sermons for Sunday evening 
services. 12mo, Cloth, $1.75. 



FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, NEW YORK and LONDON 



i 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



III 

028 310 179 4 



